ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[Acitta]

Crash involving ION train in Kitchener
No pictures

[Acitta]

Waterloo Regional Police Arrest an Impaired Driver After a Collision with LRT Train

The driver was observed striking a fire hydrant, hitting roadway curbs, and driving on the LRT tracks where a collision occurred with an occupied LRT train. Police were able to locate the vehicle and stop the driver.

[SF22]

Looking through the 2024 Preliminary Budget document, and there is a line item for 'Rolling Stock LRT Future Vehicles" with $70,000,000 earmarked for 2029-2033, so we can reasonably expect additional trains within 10 years.

"Stage 2 LRT Project Development" is another line item, with the majority of the money also blocked out in that 2029-2033 window, so I would assume that's the timeframe the region would like to actually be building Phase 2.

[tomh009]

Looking through the 2024 Preliminary Budget document, and there is a line item for 'Rolling Stock LRT Future Vehicles" with $70,000,000 earmarked for 2029-2033, so we can reasonably expect additional trains within 10 years.

Roughly how many train sets would $70M actually get us?

[taylortbb]

Looking through the 2024 Preliminary Budget document, and there is a line item for 'Rolling Stock LRT Future Vehicles" with $70,000,000 earmarked for 2029-2033, so we can reasonably expect additional trains within 10 years.

Roughly how many train sets would $70M actually get us?

I believe the current vehicles were roughly $5M each, so that sounds like ~14 vehicles, or a doubling of the fleet. That doesn't account for inflation since the original order, but we did have options for 16 more, so we probably have some amount of price protection.

[SF22]

Looking through the 2024 Preliminary Budget document, and there is a line item for 'Rolling Stock LRT Future Vehicles" with $70,000,000 earmarked for 2029-2033, so we can reasonably expect additional trains within 10 years.

Roughly how many train sets would $70M actually get us?

According to Wikipedia, we paid $6.6M per train (I think in 2013). I wouldn't be surprised if it was like $10M per train at this point, and who knows how much in another 5+ years.

[taylortbb]

Roughly how many train sets would $70M actually get us?

According to Wikipedia, we paid $6.6M per train (I think in 2013). I wouldn't be surprised if it was like $10M per train at this point, and who knows how much in another 5+ years.

The $6.6M per train is based on the total budget including tools and equipment, contingency, etc. I don't think we needed any contingency, as Bombardier was so late they ended up owing us a discount (and a free vehicle). I would also assume much of the tools/equipment doesn't scale linearly with a larger fleet. So the incremental cost of an additional vehicle is probably closer to the vehicle cost + spare part cost, which was $4.8M/vehicle.

[ac3r]

Good video on why light rail systems which run through urban cores absolutely should be tunneled underground.

[ijmorlan]

Good video on why light rail systems which run through urban cores absolutely should be tunneled underground.

The perfect is the enemy of the good. In the Waterloo Region context specifically, anybody insisting the LRT should have been tunnelled is, as a practical matter, really just saying it shouldn’t have been built at all.

[ac3r]

It should have been built correctly in the first place is all. I know everyone likes to point to the cost, but look at the price tag for the second line to Cambridge. It was always going to be costly, so we should have just tunnelled or elevated it where necessary to avoid any street interaction and extremely slow turns instead of going with the AliExpress LRT. It was going to get built anyway, the same way the Cambridge one will despite the hate it gets. That choice to not go all in on this project has forever handicapped at least this first line, then most certainly most of the one in Cambridge as well for reasons the video points out. Over the coming 30, 40, 50 plus years from now when millions live here, they're just going to have to redo the whole thing due to how dense the city is going to grow along the present route.

It was poor long term planning, anyone in the transit or built environment sphere would easily agree with that. In a way, it has been handicapped the same way the Chicago loop handicaps its transit system.

[taylortbb]

It was going to get built anyway

This is the key point. As someone that was deeply involved in the project's approval, all I can tell you is I disagree with you completely and totally. ION came within a hair of getting cancelled entirely on multiple occasions, many of them not public.

We can't prove hypotheticals, but what I can say is look at London, or Hamilton, or Victoria. All of them were talking about LRTs at the same time we were, and how many of them have an LRT today? Zero. I just don't see how you can claim such certainty that ION would get built, when we have so many examples of other similar cities in similar situations cancelling their LRT projects.

These sorts of projects are far from certain, as other cities show, and I genuinely have zero doubt that doubling the cost to do some tunneling would have killed the project.

I'm not here to tell you ION is perfect, despite your constant strawman-ing of all ION supporters as fanboys. I hate how slow it is, I hate we have the route splits, the list goes on. But you know what I'm certain of? We're the only mid size Canadian city to have an LRT, despite plenty of other cities wanting them.

The most successful LRTs are those that get built. Look at Calgary vs Edmonton, both built their initial LRTs at about the same time. Edmonton tunneled, Calgary cheaped out so hard the trains didn't even have air conditioning. One now has far more ridership than the other, and a far larger system. It's not the city that splurged on the better system. The higher costs killed Edmonton LRT expansion.

[coriander]

It was going to get built anyway

This is the key point. As someone that was deeply involved in the project's approval, all I can tell you is I disagree with you completely and totally. ION came within a hair of getting cancelled entirely on multiple occasions, many of them not public.

We can't prove hypotheticals, but what I can say is look at London, or Hamilton, or Victoria. All of them were talking about LRTs at the same time we were, and how many of them have an LRT today? Zero. I just don't see how you can claim such certainty that ION would get built, when we have so many examples of other similar cities in similar situations cancelling their LRT projects.

These sorts of projects are far from certain, as other cities show, and I genuinely have zero doubt that doubling the cost to do some tunneling would have killed the project.

I'm not here to tell you ION is perfect, despite your constant strawman-ing of all ION supporters as fanboys. I hate how slow it is, I hate we have the route splits, the list goes on. But you know what I'm certain of? We're the only mid size Canadian city to have an LRT, despite plenty of other cities wanting them.

The most successful LRTs are those that get built. Look at Calgary vs Edmonton, both built their initial LRTs at about the same time. Edmonton tunneled, Calgary cheaped out so hard the trains didn't even have air conditioning. One now has far more ridership than the other, and a far larger system. It's not the city that splurged on the better system. The higher costs killed Edmonton LRT expansion.

It'd be pretty exceptional if the iON had been a partially tunnelled system too. (Given how much runs in the branch railway, let's suppose this hypothetical alternative is an automated light metro, rather than a tramway sans traffic-interaction.)

Kitchener-Waterloo is at the end of the day a small city. Moreover, public transit has poor modal share here relative to the size of the city. Canadian modal shares are typical for those of a Western European country, so Halifax clusters with Brescia, Lausanne, and Rennes, all similarly sized, at around 13-14%, c.f. KW at 7.5%. I mention Brescia, Lausanne, and Rennes because they are likely the smallest cities to have metro systems; they are each just a little smaller than K-W. They were built cheaply , and average costs for subway in Italy, for instance, are literally an order of magnitude cheaper than those of Metrolinx subway projects. The Brescia metro is a masterpiece in cost-savings; its minimalist infrastructure, combined with the very efficient Italian transit construction industry, still made it INT$75/M, well over double the cost of the iON project. 

The benefits from these cities' metros probably exceed the 2x cost premium. But they are exceptional. Most peer cities built tramways. That a city the size of K-W, with a low transit modal share, and in a country without any real habit of building tramways (like France does) has its tramway is.... pretty nice! It could be better. It could also be worse.

[danbrotherston]

It was going to get built anyway

This is the key point. As someone that was deeply involved in the project's approval, all I can tell you is I disagree with you completely and totally. ION came within a hair of getting cancelled entirely on multiple occasions, many of them not public.

We can't prove hypotheticals, but what I can say is look at London, or Hamilton, or Victoria. All of them were talking about LRTs at the same time we were, and how many of them have an LRT today? Zero. I just don't see how you can claim such certainty that ION would get built, when we have so many examples of other similar cities in similar situations cancelling their LRT projects.

These sorts of projects are far from certain, as other cities show, and I genuinely have zero doubt that doubling the cost to do some tunneling would have killed the project.

I'm not here to tell you ION is perfect, despite your constant strawman-ing of all ION supporters as fanboys. I hate how slow it is, I hate we have the route splits, the list goes on. But you know what I'm certain of? We're the only mid size Canadian city to have an LRT, despite plenty of other cities wanting them.

The most successful LRTs are those that get built. Look at Calgary vs Edmonton, both built their initial LRTs at about the same time. Edmonton tunneled, Calgary cheaped out so hard the trains didn't even have air conditioning. One now has far more ridership than the other, and a far larger system. It's not the city that splurged on the better system. The higher costs killed Edmonton LRT expansion.

This is extremely on point, and RM Transit had a good segment on this as well. Basically the message is, we need to build cheap transit, because we need to build more transit, and when transit is excessively expensive, we won't get very much of it for our dollars.

And I think this is worth keeping in mind when discussing Phase 2...and how that might affect the possibility of Phase 3.

[KevinT]

This is the key point. As someone that was deeply involved in the project's approval, all I can tell you is I disagree with you completely and totally. ION came within a hair of getting cancelled entirely on multiple occasions, many of them not public.

We can't prove hypotheticals, but what I can say is look at London, or Hamilton, or Victoria. All of them were talking about LRTs at the same time we were, and how many of them have an LRT today? Zero. I just don't see how you can claim such certainty that ION would get built, when we have so many examples of other similar cities in similar situations cancelling their LRT projects.

These sorts of projects are far from certain, as other cities show, and I genuinely have zero doubt that doubling the cost to do some tunneling would have killed the project.

I'm not here to tell you ION is perfect, despite your constant strawman-ing of all ION supporters as fanboys. I hate how slow it is, I hate we have the route splits, the list goes on. But you know what I'm certain of? We're the only mid size Canadian city to have an LRT, despite plenty of other cities wanting them.

The most successful LRTs are those that get built. Look at Calgary vs Edmonton, both built their initial LRTs at about the same time. Edmonton tunneled, Calgary cheaped out so hard the trains didn't even have air conditioning. One now has far more ridership than the other, and a far larger system. It's not the city that splurged on the better system. The higher costs killed Edmonton LRT expansion.

This is extremely on point, and RM Transit had a good segment on this as well. Basically the message is, we need to build cheap transit, because we need to build more transit, and when transit is excessively expensive, we won't get very much of it for our dollars.

And I think this is worth keeping in mind when discussing Phase 2...and how that might affect the possibility of Phase 3.

Thanks to you both for the voices of reason.

[Acitta]

Waterloo Park, ION train featured in video from prime minister
“That’s the ION light rail, it runs through Kitchener-Waterloo,” said Trudeau in the video posted to X, as the LRT goes by in the background. “If you live near public transit like the ION, you get to spend less money on parking, less time stuck in traffic.”