ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[taylortbb]

Quick question for anyone in the know: how long will King Street likely be closed? Everywhere I've read claims "TBD" is the end date of the closure. Any harder ideas floating around?

Union to Wellington should reopen later this year. They will still be doing work with the middle lanes into next year for building the trackway, but that should be lane closures rather than full road closures. Wellington to Victoria won't reopen until late 2016 to early 2017 because of the grade separation work. Union to Allen I expect to continue into next year given the late start, and Allen to Erb will be done entirely next year.

I think the original plan for later this year would have been around September to October, but both Borden and Caroline took longer than expected so I'm not sure that's accurate.

[MidTowner]

Union to Wellington should reopen later this year. They will still be doing work with the middle lanes into next year for building the trackway, but that should be lane closures rather than full road closures. Wellington to Victoria won't reopen until late 2016 to early 2017 because of the grade separation work. Union to Allen I expect to continue into next year given the late start, and Allen to Erb will be done entirely next year.

I think the original plan for later this year would have been around September to October, but both Borden and Caroline took longer than expected so I'm not sure that's accurate.

Thanks a lot. I wonder if the 7 and iXpress' detours will end once some of King's lanes are opened back up.

[Markster]

Thanks a lot. I wonder if the 7 and iXpress' detours will end once some of King's lanes are opened back up.

What I've heard from GRT is that they're going for as few changes to detour routings as possible.   This is why there were ridiculous things like the iXpress taking the Queen/Courtland/Benton jog, even when Charles St was wide open.  It was so that the route was predictable for the drivers, whenever the closure actually started.

I suspect that GRT will be hesitant to put anything back on King until we have rails in the ground.  I think it might be possible to convince them to take the iXpress back to King via Wellington so they can serve the hospital again, but I don't see the 7 moving off Park St, (Victoia to Union) until the King grade separation is done.

[Pheidippides]

I wish they'd temporary disable the light at Caroline and William and replace it with stop signs on SB and ND Caroline; it takes 3-4 cycles of the traffic signals to get across King between Park and Regina.

[Canard]

A bit late in getting these up, but here are some photos I took last weekend.

   
Heavy work along Charles, between Stirling and Borden.

   
Lots of work progress at the OMSF.

   
Trackwork ready to head South - I imagine this will start at a rapid pace once the University and Seagram crossings are complete.

   
Looking across the top of the new culvert at Waterloo Park.

[Canard]

   
Unloading of rails behind the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery.

   

   
Looking North from Erb/Caroline.

   
I follow "Faces in Things" on twitter, and all I can think of when I see that backhoe EoAT is googley eyes and teeth.  

[jgsz]

Canard, your first picture is on Charles Street E, not Caroline. Good pictures. Thanks.

[Canard]

Thanks, I do tend to get road names in the Region mixed up.

Here are some photos from this morning.  Biggest news is the discovery that track has made it all the way South to behind McCormic Arena!  If you're not familiar with the process, alignment equipment will come by later to precisely align the rails, to within a few millimetres.

   

   

   

   

   

[Markster]

In Waterloo Park, where they've been welding the short sections of rail together, they've almost finished stringing all the short sections together into these long ones.

   

[Waterlooer]

How come the rails in those last couple photos so zigzagy?

[ookpik]

How come the rails in those last couple photos so zigzagy?

Either
1. you're smoking something stronger than tobacco
2. you're drinking something stronger than Coke
3. you're having trouble reading Canard's comments at the top of his post 

[tomh009]

What I've heard from GRT is that they're going for as few changes to detour routings as possible.   This is why there were ridiculous things like the iXpress taking the Queen/Courtland/Benton jog, even when Charles St was wide open.  It was so that the route was predictable for the drivers, whenever the closure actually started.

I think being predictable for riders is possibly even more important ... drivers should learn new routes fairly quickly, but there are lots and lots of riders who don't necessarily all ride any given route regularly.

[ijmorlan]

How come the rails in those last couple photos so zigzagy?

Either
1. you're smoking something stronger than tobacco
2. you're drinking something stronger than Coke
3. you're having trouble reading Canard's comments at the top of his post 

Perhaps more importantly, photos taken along a track tend to enhance any slight deviation from perfectly smooth because the content of the photo appears foreshortened. The same effect also results in train cars appearing much shorter than they really are. Essentially it is because the photo does not actually have depth. If you were to stand there and look at the wavy tracks, they would not appear wavy, although if you got down and looked right along them you could probably perceive the waviness.

A similar photo was dishonestly used in Toronto to complain about the St. Clair streetcar project. The tracks there are not perfectly straight for a variety of reasons (e.g., needing to work around left-turn lanes) but are as straight as they need to be for the design speed.

Having said that, photos taken exactly like these will likely look significantly straighter once the final alignment has been set.

[jamincan]

Also, the track isn't in the final position. A special vehicle will come along and position the tracks and ties precisely and then tamp in the ballast around the ties to keep it in place.

[Canard]

Yes, as I mentioned in my post above, the alignment is just preliminary.  They place the ties in approximately the right position on the ballast, set the rails temporarily on top, then the tamping machine (you've all likely seen it by now parked either up at the OMSF or at Waterloo Station) comes along and precisely aligns the track. It does this by lifting the track slightly and tugging it a bit to the left or the right. The long extension in front of it has a measuring system so it knows how much it needs to move the track by.