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After following the construction of the Kansas City Streetcar project, I got to ride it today! We're on a big Midwest US road trip (2700 km and counting) right now, and one of our stops is Kansas City. This is a great little system that came in on-time and under-budget, and is heavily used. Every train I saw today was packed. It connects Kansas City's (absolutely massive!) Union Station with their thriving Riverfront District. The line uses CAF Urbos3 trams, which have the same type of fixed-bogie configuration that our Bombardier FLEXITY trams will have (just 2 fewer modules). The line does not run in a dedicated ROW, so traffic does have to wait and gets hung up a bit... but they have maintained a massive amount of (free) parking all along the entire route, so I think that's a very fair compromise.
Seeing how well the system works here makes me that much more excited for opening day for ion!
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">...it's the little things. <a href="https://twitter.com/kcstreetcar">@kcstreetcar</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/RideKCTransit">@RideKCTransit</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/kclightrail">@kclightrail</a> Cc: <a href="https://twitter.com/chrisjamesdrew">@chrisjamesdrew</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/rideIONrt">@rideIONrt</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/LightRail?src=hash">#LightRail</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/KC?src=hash">#KC</a> <a href="https://t.co/WjBV3L4xjO">pic.twitter.com/WjBV3L4xjO</a></p>— iain (@Canardiain) <a href="https://twitter.com/Canardiain/status/744279521927430144">June 18, 2016</a></blockquote>
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Were there cat poles here before? I can't remember. Either way, I really like this area of Uptown now. It will look so great with trains running through it!
![[Image: 7Xdr40x.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/7Xdr40x.jpg)
Here as well... you can see so much completed track here. And with Cedar closing on Monday , we'll just about finally have a through route of track all the way down Charles!
![[Image: lA0I2Oc.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/lA0I2Oc.jpg)
Some of the progress at Queen / Charles. I believe Markster posted some photos of this to the FB group recently, but here's a panorama from above!
![[Image: 8EyQXIz.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/8EyQXIz.jpg)
Poles are up on Francis. track is also laid (but not embedded) from Water down to Bell. There's 3 types of poles, I'm trying to figure them out; the tall cone-like ones are street lights, I think? and the short, metal ones must be traffic lights? There's black plastic things around where the cat poles will go. It seems like there's a lot of the street light ones here, maybe just because of the visibility around the curve? will be a mess of lights, either way.
![[Image: qvGe2l4.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/qvGe2l4.jpg)
![[Image: cMo4IEP.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/cMo4IEP.jpg)
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Thanks for the photos, GtwoK! Especially the overhead of Charles at Queen.
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Sod has gone down along Borden! It's looking positively phenominal!
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My walk down Charles St.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I took a walk down Charles St to see how the <a href="https://twitter.com/rideIONrt">@rideIONrt</a> progress is going.<br>Wow, this thing looks ready to open. <a href="https://t.co/cMyzieYA1R">pic.twitter.com/cMyzieYA1R</a></p>— Mark Jackson-Brown (@Markster3000) <a href="https://twitter.com/Markster3000/status/744209916597002240">June 18, 2016</a></blockquote>
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...ready to open if the trains were equipped with PRIMOVE, perhaps. 
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(06-18-2016, 11:48 PM)Canard Wrote: ...ready to open if the trains were equipped with PRIMOVE, perhaps.
Cars don't need Primove, they run on gas. 
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(06-19-2016, 06:36 PM)dunkalunk Wrote: (06-18-2016, 11:48 PM)Canard Wrote: ...ready to open if the trains were equipped with PRIMOVE, perhaps.
Cars don't need Primove, they run on gas.
D'oh, I didn't realize Markster meant the road, not the tracks. Definitely it should open!
Interestingly enough, cars can run on PRIMOVE!
Riding St. Louis' LRT system today. A large chunk of it was built on an existing railway ROW, just like ion, and the trains just fly!
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Gotta say, the Duke work seems to be proceeding pretty quickly compared to other locations. No masses of utilities to move, I guess.
Wonder if this holds for the rest of Duke? Maybe that's why they left it until later.
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The curb machine was at King / Wellington this morning. ready to curb the remaining section of King between there and Louisa.
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One thing that seems to have helped at Duke just west of Ontario is that the existing hydro vault is on the south side of the street - as the tracks are on the north side, that saved a cumbersome relocation.
There is a buried hydro vault right in the middle of Frederick between King and Duke, however - if that has to move, we may be seeing delays there.
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Delays? Surely if there's a massive thing that has to move, it would have been known about, and built into the schedule?
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Sorry, not delays as such - it just may be a big part of the scheduled work.
I'm not sure if its location is a problem to begin with, though.
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From the CBC this morning: Pedestrian safety near LRT construction sites galls residents
It's certainly true that foot access around the construction zones in the core has been pretty poor. There's likely no way around it, though. I've had attempts to get around frustrated by the fact that the access gives no consideration for anyone who might be using wheels. But I can't usually think of a way that the shifting construction zones could be made more accessible. If GrandLinq tried to provide only access that was completely accessible, it would probably mean restricting access a lot more than it is. A lot of the paths they provide will necessarily only be useful for the able-bodied and unencumbered.
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06-20-2016, 07:30 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-20-2016, 07:31 PM by ElsieEm.)
(06-20-2016, 03:43 PM)MidTowner Wrote: From the CBC this morning: Pedestrian safety near LRT construction sites galls residents
It's certainly true that foot access around the construction zones in the core has been pretty poor. There's likely no way around it, though. I've had attempts to get around frustrated by the fact that the access gives no consideration for anyone who might be using wheels. But I can't usually think of a way that the shifting construction zones could be made more accessible. If GrandLinq tried to provide only access that was completely accessible, it would probably mean restricting access a lot more than it is. A lot of the paths they provide will necessarily only be useful for the able-bodied and unencumbered.
That's really interesting. We live at Duke & Water, and the road crossings and pedestrian walkways around here are a hot mess, and have been for months. Like someone in that article said, it's a new adventure every day! That said, last night (so, Sunday) at around 8-9pm there were a couple of guys working to fix up the fences, raking the gravel paths to be smoother and free of bigger debris and rocks etc. My husband and I were a little bamboozled that they were working so late on a Sunday night tidying things up when they've never really bothered before, but now I suppose it was in response to this media scrutiny!
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