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I have been reading through the rail study for 236/264 Victoria St N, Kitchener, and there is some information related to GO included that you might find interesting as well:
- ...[T]here is a permanent slow order between MP 61.8 and MP 63.52, between which the study area is located, that limits passenger trains and freight train speeds to 30 mph in preparation for a stop at the Kitchener GO Transit station, therefore the speed of GO Transit trains should not exceed 30 mph once the Kitchener Expansion Project will be completed in 2025. (p12)
- Metrolinx anticipates that, on a typical weekday, 99 GO Transit trains (both revenue and equipment trains) will run on the Guelph Subdivision adjacent to the Proposed Development once the Metrolinx Kitchener expansion project is operational (p12)
- There are anti-whistling by-laws in affect near the subject lands at Duke St, Saint. Leger St. Park St, Strange St, and Lancaster St. W. (Appendix A)
Full rail study is here: https://app2.kitchener.ca/AppDocs/OpenDa...Report.pdf
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(01-10-2024, 05:26 PM)SF22 Wrote: I have been reading through the rail study for 236/264 Victoria St N, Kitchener, and there is some information related to GO included that you might find interesting as well:
- ...[T]here is a permanent slow order between MP 61.8 and MP 63.52, between which the study area is located, that limits passenger trains and freight train speeds to 30 mph in preparation for a stop at the Kitchener GO Transit station, therefore the speed of GO Transit trains should not exceed 30 mph once the Kitchener Expansion Project will be completed in 2025. (p12)
- Metrolinx anticipates that, on a typical weekday, 99 GO Transit trains (both revenue and equipment trains) will run on the Guelph Subdivision adjacent to the Proposed Development once the Metrolinx Kitchener expansion project is operational (p12)
- There are anti-whistling by-laws in affect near the subject lands at Duke St, Saint. Leger St. Park St, Strange St, and Lancaster St. W. (Appendix A)
Full rail study is here: https://app2.kitchener.ca/AppDocs/OpenDa...Report.pdf
That seems reasonable as that is the approximate stopping distance from 30mph (48km/h) at 0.1m/s² deceleration.
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While 99 trains seems like a lot, if they ramp up to an 18 hour operating day, that works out to 5.5 trains an hour. If one factors in movement to and from the yard, suddenly 99 doesn't seem like enough for a weekday.
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Since when does an encampment at Weber St. affect development on the transit hub lands between King and Duke, especially the first phase of such construction? Suddenly we’re building a transit hub 3 blocks long? Now I’m a big proponent of enormously horizontally large buildings, but this is the first we’ve heard of the Duke to Weber block having anything to do with the transit hub.
Note by way of support for my consternation that the tracks wiggle over — by the time you get to Duke St. you are past the end of where a straight platform can be.
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(02-06-2024, 10:35 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: Since when does an encampment at Weber St. affect development on the transit hub lands between King and Duke, especially the first phase of such construction? Suddenly we’re building a transit hub 3 blocks long? Now I’m a big proponent of enormously horizontally large buildings, but this is the first we’ve heard of the Duke to Weber block having anything to do with the transit hub.
Note by way of support for my consternation that the tracks wiggle over — by the time you get to Duke St. you are past the end of where a straight platform can be.
The Region was planning on using the Weber/Victoria lot as an off site parking lot for the station, there were plans floating around somewhere for it. The court ruling for the encampment effectively blocked the Regions plan for the parking lot however. Thus it seems reasonable to assume that instead of having that parking lot right at Weber/Victoria the parking lot will now be at Duke/Victoria. The property could then years down the road be converted to a TOC of some sorts along with the rest of the land owned by the Region.
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(02-07-2024, 12:01 AM)ZEBuilder Wrote: (02-06-2024, 10:35 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: Since when does an encampment at Weber St. affect development on the transit hub lands between King and Duke, especially the first phase of such construction? Suddenly we’re building a transit hub 3 blocks long? Now I’m a big proponent of enormously horizontally large buildings, but this is the first we’ve heard of the Duke to Weber block having anything to do with the transit hub.
Note by way of support for my consternation that the tracks wiggle over — by the time you get to Duke St. you are past the end of where a straight platform can be.
The Region was planning on using the Weber/Victoria lot as an off site parking lot for the station, there were plans floating around somewhere for it. The court ruling for the encampment effectively blocked the Regions plan for the parking lot however. Thus it seems reasonable to assume that instead of having that parking lot right at Weber/Victoria the parking lot will now be at Duke/Victoria. The property could then years down the road be converted to a TOC of some sorts along with the rest of the land owned by the Region.
I saw those drawings for the Victoria/Weber parking lot as well - it was meant for staff parking for those who would work at the transit hub. I believe they also intended to use that lot to stage materials as part of the building process.
I wouldn't be surprised if we see a full redesign of the transit hub now. We're now dealing with 25,000 square metres of uninterrupted space, instead of the original 16,000 (plus the surface lot, which is about 1800). Maybe the trains will stop a little further towards Weber, or Waterloo Region Housing will push to actually include affordable housing in towers above the hub; we know they've been reviewing all regional land to see where substantial housing can be built with strong connectivity, and this feels like an obvious choice. It'd be fantastic to see a line of four or five storefronts along King St behind the Central LRT station, geared towards pedestrians using the transit space - a coffee shop, a convenience store, a bakery, any grab-and-go restaurant, a bank, a fresh grocer selling the veggies and meat you need for dinner. The fact that there was not a single shop in the original hub plans is appalling.
And how about having the Cherry Park trail cross over King as originally drawn, and run parallel with the train tracks all the way down to Weber to connect with the Weber MUT? Ideally they also scrap the idea of a surface lot, and now that they have a little bit of extra space for things like ramps, that they push the minimal parking down one level and set a building on top of it.
I do wonder if the original plan was dealing with a massive space limitation that caused them to make frustrating choices. I can only hope that the extra space will allow for some more logical decisions to get made.
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(02-07-2024, 12:03 PM)SF22 Wrote: (02-07-2024, 12:01 AM)ZEBuilder Wrote: The Region was planning on using the Weber/Victoria lot as an off site parking lot for the station, there were plans floating around somewhere for it. The court ruling for the encampment effectively blocked the Regions plan for the parking lot however. Thus it seems reasonable to assume that instead of having that parking lot right at Weber/Victoria the parking lot will now be at Duke/Victoria. The property could then years down the road be converted to a TOC of some sorts along with the rest of the land owned by the Region.
I saw those drawings for the Victoria/Weber parking lot as well - it was meant for staff parking for those who would work at the transit hub. I believe they also intended to use that lot to stage materials as part of the building process.
Thanks to both of you for the information. Not sure why we’d be planning for surface parking at that location.
Quote:I wouldn't be surprised if we see a full redesign of the transit hub now. …
I hope we get something like what you described. A lot of good ideas there.
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(02-07-2024, 01:59 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: (02-07-2024, 12:03 PM)SF22 Wrote: I saw those drawings for the Victoria/Weber parking lot as well - it was meant for staff parking for those who would work at the transit hub. I believe they also intended to use that lot to stage materials as part of the building process.
Thanks to both of you for the information. Not sure why we’d be planning for surface parking at that location.
Oh come now, you know exactly why we'd be planning a surface parking lot at that location.
I do hope we get something good at the transit station. But even more than that, I hope we actually get a transit station. Frankly, the previous budgets for the transit station have been insane (same as the ION to Cambridge), further increasing the project's scope could threaten it's very existence. What I *would* like to see is more incrementalism. Stop paving some shitty parking lots everywhere, because it sets the precedent that the parking is provided and that the lot exists (and is a sunk cost), just build the station as planned, and leave it an empty lot next door, then when a plan for it arrives, do that then.
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(02-07-2024, 12:01 AM)ZEBuilder Wrote: The Region was planning on using the Weber/Victoria lot as an off site parking lot for the station, there were plans floating around somewhere for it. The court ruling for the encampment effectively blocked the Regions plan for the parking lot however. Thus it seems reasonable to assume that instead of having that parking lot right at Weber/Victoria the parking lot will now be at Duke/Victoria. The property could then years down the road be converted to a TOC of some sorts along with the rest of the land owned by the Region.
I remember that they wanted to use the encampment lot as a construction staging area, hence that attempt at eviction which was denied in the courts. When was it said that that lot was going to be parking?
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(02-07-2024, 02:41 PM)Bytor Wrote: (02-07-2024, 12:01 AM)ZEBuilder Wrote: The Region was planning on using the Weber/Victoria lot as an off site parking lot for the station, there were plans floating around somewhere for it. The court ruling for the encampment effectively blocked the Regions plan for the parking lot however. Thus it seems reasonable to assume that instead of having that parking lot right at Weber/Victoria the parking lot will now be at Duke/Victoria. The property could then years down the road be converted to a TOC of some sorts along with the rest of the land owned by the Region.
I remember that they wanted to use the encampment lot as a construction staging area, hence that attempt at eviction which was denied in the courts. When was it said that that lot was going to be parking?
If you look at page 4 of the most recent plans posted in March it shows the Region's plan for the Weber/Victoria property.
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02-08-2024, 05:14 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-08-2024, 05:29 PM by ac3r.)
(02-06-2024, 10:35 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: Since when does an encampment at Weber St. affect development on the transit hub lands between King and Duke, especially the first phase of such construction? Suddenly we’re building a transit hub 3 blocks long? Now I’m a big proponent of enormously horizontally large buildings, but this is the first we’ve heard of the Duke to Weber block having anything to do with the transit hub.
Well...it's incredibly unsafe. Put a dirty lawless homeless encampment 3 blocks from Union Station and you'd see it would be extremely undesirable and very unsafe. Nobody wants to be anywhere near that kind of mess because it would be dangerous. Add in construction and it's even worse.
It would make the job site very unsafe. GO Transit and VIA already have to be worried about crackheads stumbling across the tracks, so the last thing we need is them falling into a pit or nodding out on a massive urban job site. Plus, securing the site would be expensive because obviously they would be trying to steal stuff all the time. For the last couple years it has cost us tens of thousands of dollars (probably hundreds at this point) just to pay for security and policing them on a gravel lot. It'd cost even more money to have security monitoring a job site for a few years straight in order to minimize theft (tools, metals, electronics etc). Developers like VanMar and IN8 have had to spend a lot of money securing their job sites downtown, so doing the same on a government project that would take years to complete would cost even more money.
Asking how and why having homeless people, rail lines and construction sites together in a small area is a bad thing shouldn't even be a serious question. Injuries and potentially deaths would be inevitable. While the encampment sits a good 300 meters away, that's still way too close for it to be safe. In the United States of America where homelessness is much, much worse there has been a continual rise in deaths due to them camping out alongside railroad tracks.
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If the Region and Cities decide to build affordable housing on parking lots, maybe this spot could be a good candidate. Start by creating affordable or supportive housing the Rumpel Felt building, and then build more there. This population will always be part of our community.
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That does nothing to solve homelessness, though. You can't just give hundreds of petty criminals, addicts and people who suffer from psychiatric issues a cheap place to stay and solve the problem. They need to be institutionalized until they are capable of doing basic human tasks most of us don't even think about. You can't just stick schizophrenics and opiate addicts in an apartment and expect good results.
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I really wish that the forum software here completely hid posts from people you've blocked. Some days I lack the self control not to peak where I shouldn't peak. But I'm comfortable that everyone here knows that basically everything ac3r says here is complete bullshit. There are lots of homeless people who are not criminals, addicts, and/or schizophrenics. Those that are (addicts and petty criminals) actually do benefit from housing, given that if we had to sleep outside in a tent in winter in Canada, we would also seek chemical means of detaching ourselves from reality (that includes Mr. high and mighty). And leaving all that aside, the evidence is absolute, housing people does in fact solve homelessness...basically by definition, but also again, because most of the other related problems are impossible to solve while people are homeless.
So...this is better than his previous comment calling homeless people vermin, but still full of misconceptions...to put it politely.
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