ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[Markster]

Are the Calgary and Edmonton numbers for the city or the metropolitan area?

The 20th century numbers are City, the 21st century numbers are Metro. This is to acknowledge that the cities have grown substantially in that time, their LRT reaches the city limits in a few places, and that their exurbs almost certainly supply riders to their Park-and-Rides.

[jeffster]

There's a bit of a discussion on Urban Toronto about how small KW is to be getting an LRT, and how that compares to Calgary and Edmonton.
I ended up crunching some numbers:


The interesting thing to compare would be Population per System Length

Code:

Edmonton 1978:           478,000 / 6.9 km  = 69275 people / system km
Edmonton 2017:         1,062,643 / 24.3 km = 43730 people / system km
Calgary 1981:            593,000 / 12 km   = 49416 people / system km
Calgary 2017:          1,392,609 / 59.9 km = 23248 people / system km
Waterloo Region 2017:    583,500 / 19 km   = 30710 people / system km
Kitchener-Waterloo 2017: 309,654 / 19 km   = 16297 people / system km

You may want to revise the KW population, the official census amount is closer to 339,000 -- if you include 'school population', it's closer to 370,000.

[Markster]

Yeah, I totally just went with Wikipedia numbers for Kitchener+Waterloo

[ijmorlan]

Thanks for making me feel better guys.  I was kind of cranky this morning.

In terms of the "Population per System Length" a cool metric would be the population within X meters of the system.

That would really make more sense. It’s not really about how big the city is, but rather how many people are near the system. In an extreme case, one can imagine a poorly designed LRT being installed in a city with a huge land area and a huge population, but in an area distinct from almost the entire population. On the other hand a small dense city may well be able to usefully build a small LRT at populations even smaller than ours.

[Markster]

That would really make more sense.

Well... it doesn't have to make "more" sense. They're both things worth measuring...

[chutten]

I like the residents per km metric. Another interesting one would be riders per km (once we get some of those :S)

[SammyOES]

Well... it doesn't have to make "more" sense.    They're both things worth measuring...

Agreed. Also interesting would be the correlation between residents within X meters of the system and total ridership. I assume somewhere people are doing analysis like this...

[JoeKW]

Is the temporary student population counted in that metric?

[ijmorlan]

That would really make more sense.

Well... it doesn't have to make "more" sense.    They're both things worth measuring...

That’s a good point. Although I think of city populations as being somewhat arbitrary — since the borders are in some sense arbitrary. If the Region is amalgamated into one city that doesn’t mean that we should replace the K-W population with the whole region population in the computation. On the other hand if the borders “make sense” (judgement call) then they might be relevant for evaluating transit.

And of course the “near a stop” measure also has some arbitrariness — who decides how far from a stop is “near”? The exact number is arbitrary (within a range of reasonable values) but may significantly affect the overall computation.

Isn’t it great that we can talk about stuff like this rather than whether certain politicians are going to win the election and cancel the project?

[Viewfromthe42]

Thanks for making me feel better guys.  I was kind of cranky this morning.

In terms of the "Population per System Length" a cool metric would be the population within X meters of the system.

That would really make more sense. It’s not really about how big the city is, but rather how many people are near the system. In an extreme case, one can imagine a poorly designed LRT being installed in a city with a huge land area and a huge population, but in an area distinct from almost the entire population. On the other hand a small dense city may well be able to usefully build a small LRT at populations even smaller than ours.

The scarborough subway extension. You're describing the 3.5-4 billion 3km scarborough subway extension.

[jeffster]

Yeah, I totally just went with Wikipedia numbers for Kitchener+Waterloo

Yeah, but even with wiki it's still about 339,000.  I added about 35,000 based on the additional population (mostly Waterloo) that is posted on the "Welcome" signs.  Actually, I am pretty sure that a good chunk of that additional population will be using this LRT. Only issue with that is that they (University Students) don't pay much for their pass.

Anyway, perhaps it makes the numbers look a little bit better, but if phase II goes ahead as scheduled, then the numbers (population per KM) will go back down.

[tomh009]

Although I think of city populations as being somewhat arbitrary — since the borders are in some sense arbitrary. If the Region is amalgamated into one city that doesn’t mean that we should replace the K-W population with the whole region population in the computation.

Metropolitan areas are based on density and (usually) do not follow municipal borders.

[mpd618]

With all the complaints about people turning left where it's not allowed, I don't think there's been much discussion of the specifics of the signage. Right now there are small signs on the lights, but unless I'm missing something, there are no arrows painted on the lanes. I think the latter would help a great deal to indicate that there is only straight-through traffic.

[tomh009]

Indeed. I suggested this some time ago when discussing left turns onto Benton from Charles.

[danbrotherston]

What would also help is signage indicating the new route, i.e., at Francis put "turn for Victoria St.", as well at FDB