ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[notmyfriends]

I choo-choo-choose to like it!

[Canard]

1/1 - Sunday, July 24

   
These catpoles were put up on Saturday afternoon.

   
Looking up Francis, from King.

   
I wonder where this came from?

   
Pulling rails around the corner at Allen/King (from being stored on Caroline, at Freemont). If you're wondering why they're pulling from the East, it's because they had to pull them further down Allen, then go back onto King, because of the yellow building there. See video, here.

   
Seagram/Waterloo Park/Laurier station.

[GtwoK]

If everything was all done and finished, that last photo would make an EXCELLENT promotional shot for Ion. Damn, that makes the rails look sexy.

[mpd618]

That sidewalk in front of Kaufman is awful, and it's going to be extremely expensive to fix it in the future. It's mind-boggling that they didn't narrow the rest of the roadway.

Soon enough, with the transit hub and other projects near King/Victoria, foot traffic will increase and it will become dangerous in addition to being a terrible experience.

[Drake]

How would you like the view out the windows of those Kaufman condos?

[Canard]

Rumbly! The concrete foundation and polished concrete floors is going to make those ground-floor units facing King kind of awful. View will be great, though! . The ground floor units were cheaper (by a lot) when we bought our condo there (we used to live on the fourth floor, facing Victoria). That whole corner has changed so much in the last decade; it's pretty incredible.

The radio reminded me this morning that Wilson's shutting down between Fairway and Kingsway for a couple of months (track installation). That's gonna be a nasty one for folks in that area.

[panamaniac]

That sidewalk in front of Kaufman is awful, and it's going to be extremely expensive to fix it in the future. It's mind-boggling that they didn't narrow the rest of the roadway.

Soon enough, with the transit hub and other projects near King/Victoria, foot traffic will increase and it will become dangerous in addition to being a terrible experience.

That would have obliged converting the block of King to one-way, no?

[chutten]

That sidewalk in front of Kaufman is awful, and it's going to be extremely expensive to fix it in the future. It's mind-boggling that they didn't narrow the rest of the roadway.

Soon enough, with the transit hub and other projects near King/Victoria, foot traffic will increase and it will become dangerous in addition to being a terrible experience.

That would have obliged converting the block of King to one-way, no?

Or turning it into a pedestrian haven. *dreams*

[Canard]

My other half and I always believed that King should have been made a pedestrian+LRT corridor right through the heart of Kitchener, from Victoria to Frederick/Benton. Leave Duke and Charles as-is and close King. Lots of cities have done this, with fantastic results.

[BuildingScout]

My other half and I always believed that King should have been made a pedestrian+LRT corridor right through the heart of Kitchener, from Victoria to Frederick/Benton. Leave Duke and Charles as-is and close King. Lots of cities have done this, with fantastic results.

Hear, hear.

[Drake]

That is a good idea and will probably has safety and financial merit to it as well.

[mpd618]

Yeah, completely closing at least that block of King to through car traffic would be a practical way of solving the problem.

[Markster]

That sidewalk in front of Kaufman is awful, and it's going to be extremely expensive to fix it in the future. It's mind-boggling that they didn't narrow the rest of the roadway

Yeah, they clearly aligned things based on making sure they could fit in the King-to-Francis left turn bay, which is frankly unnecessary. If you're on King St going into downtown, you're in for a slow drive regardless.  

The plan for that area:

   

Jeez, that Eastbound-to-Southbound turn radius is massive. How many tractor-trailers an hour are they expecting to be making that turn?

[Canard]

It's not for the trucks. It's for the swing-out radius clearance for the nose of our fixed-bogie LRV's.

[Markster]

I'm not talking about the LRT turn radius, I'm taking about the one for cars.
They have clearly marked that thin wedge as a "pedestrian refuge", so no LRV stuff is going to be swinging into it.  But to that point, it clearly could have been larger, with a tighter turn radius for the cars.