ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[ac3r]

And the roads weren’t meant for automobiles. They were originally meant for pedestrians and horse-drawn vehicles, then later electric streetcars were added. Only more recently did automobiles become common and eventually take over almost the whole right-of-way. Then yet more recently tracks were added back in, making the central portion of the street “meant for” both private vehicles and automobiles, in separate lanes.

Generally speaking, roads have always been for vehicles.

First, indeed, horse-drawn vehicles used them. Then electric trolleys. Then personal automobiles. Pedestrians would usually opt to use a sidewalk, or at the very least not directly where vehicles operated. For one, nobody wants to walk through horse shit. Nobody wants to walk where trolleys and trains operate. Nobody wants to cycle where cars operate. It's quite simple.

Roads are for cars. Rail corridors are for trains. Bike lanes/paths are for bikes. Sidewalks are for people. What is so hard to understand about that? Different modes of transportation require different forms of infrastructure. It's why you don't see people taking their dog for a walk on the LRT corridor, or cycling to work in the fast lane of a 400-series highway. It is not safe to mix them and even when it is necessary, we tend to take every precaution to minimize any chance of a collision (gates, bells, whistles, bridges, tunnels etc).

Pic related:

[Momo26]

Just caught a commercial of Ford's on YT I think where he days we are REMOVING bike lanes.

I know much as been said on the topic already but look at that approach. Wise or wicked?

[ijmorlan]

Just caught a commercial of Ford's on YT I think where he days we are REMOVING bike lanes.

I know much as been said on the topic already but look at that approach. Wise or wicked?

Not wise, but too stupid to be classified as wicked or not. Not least because that sort of planning is a local level matter, not appropriate for provincial meddling.

[bravado]

Just caught a commercial of Ford's on YT I think where he days we are REMOVING bike lanes.

I know much as been said on the topic already but look at that approach. Wise or wicked?

Not wise, but too stupid to be classified as wicked or not. Not least because that sort of planning is a local level matter, not appropriate for provincial meddling.

I think ripping out the bike lanes and then passing a law forbidding wrongful death lawsuits is pretty clearly in the wicked category

[Bytor]

Just caught a commercial of Ford's on YT I think where he days we are REMOVING bike lanes.

I know much as been said on the topic already but look at that approach. Wise or wicked?

You don't hear of that previously? Ford started amping up that CultureWar™ battle back in October and the law requiring municipalities to consult with the Province on any bike lane infrastructure that affects car lanes back in October. He also wants to remove three specific, well-used bike lanes in Toronto because he wrong thinks they cause traffic congestion and the Ford Government had to resort to using 10-20 year old cycling stats to make a half-assed attempt to "prove" their case.

Definitely not wise, as bike lanes provide alternate, more efficient means of transportation around a city and getting rid of them or disallowing new ones only means more cars and more traffic on roads that are already too full and cannot be expanded.

And disallowing injury law suits by cyclists who get injured on routes where bike lanes were removed against governments who do so is most assuredly wicked.

[danbrotherston]

So I took the Utrech Tram today (due to the usual intercity train I take not running because of a damaged overhead wire) and I realized that through the Utrecht Science Park (University) the busway and the tramway are combined into one. You can see here, the tracks, and the buses running along the tracks and pulling into bus stop.

I mean, we all knew that GRT's statement that they couldn't run buses and trams together in the same right of way was bullshit, but just in case anyone had any doubts here is a VERY busy bus route (literally 20-30 buses an hour) combined with a very busy tramway (10-15 trams an hour--more than KW) and they're operating with no issues.

I doubt GRT actually wanted to kill the downtown cycling grid, I'm sure it was just a happy coincidence...but it's clear they could easily have made it work on Duke...they just didn't want to.

   

[Bob_McBob]

As usual, ION is completely out of service due to ice accumulation, despite doubling up trains and deploying ice scrapers.

[bravado]

we just gotta double down on those P3's, maybe make them a P4 and we'll just get better service any day now

[bravado]

Pretty wild video of the Ion struggling with the ice buildup posted on reddit an hour ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/waterloo/commen...f0m/ionic/

[ac3r]

Just imagine how good it could have been...! :'P

[ac3r]

All considered, though, I'm surprised the LRT actually worked most of this winter. It's still a pile o' crap, but at least they figured out that maybe scraping away ice and shovelling snow is a good idea.

[KevinL]

Pretty sure tunneling here is very tricky - high water table and a sandy base. Just the King underpass alone was tricky to engineer, and phase 2 is using mostly bridges for a reason.

[danbrotherston]

Pretty sure tunneling here is very tricky - high water table and a sandy base. Just the King underpass alone was tricky to engineer, and phase 2 is using mostly bridges for a reason.

Leaving aside the technical difficulties (if they can build a deep bore subway in Amsterdam, they can do it in KW), tunneled transit is simply a worse user experience than well optimized surface transit.

[ZEBuilder]

Pretty sure tunneling here is very tricky - high water table and a sandy base. Just the King underpass alone was tricky to engineer, and phase 2 is using mostly bridges for a reason.

Tunnelling isn't impossible with a high water table and sand it just changes how you tunnel. The largest difference you'll see is the type of TBM used. In the GTA you'll generally see EPB TBMs (Earth Pressure Balance TBM) which use the extracted fine soils (silts/clays) to maintain the pressure in front of the cutter head. The other common type used is a hard rock TBM which as the name suggests is designed to go through bedrock. 

In KWs case since we have a lot of coarse soils (sand/gravel) you'd likely see a slurry TBM. With that said there are places in KW which have higher fine amounts. This could certainly pose a problem for a slurry TBM as the more fines the harder it is to seperate the excavated material from the slurry. This means reusing the slurry becomes a more challenging task.

Phase 2 is also mainly bridges because of the amount of rivers and train lines it has to cross, you'd have to be extremely deep to make a tunnel remotely feasible to pass under the Grand River which just doesn't make much sense when a bridge is way easier.

[ac3r]

Tunnelling in this area is very possible. People always point to the water table to say it would be infeasible, but...we know how to make tunnels in any condition. It would have been costly, but if they tunnelled where it made sense (the urban core areas, mostly) it would have resulted in a much better truly rapid transit system rather than this Frankenstein amalgamation of street car + tram + light rail system that is objectively bad since it is trying to do numerous things at once whilst failing spectacularly at all of them.

If they put everything between like...Borden and Waterloo Park Station underground or elevated where necessary, it could be taken way more seriously as a transit system since it wouldn't have issues like not being able to operate in ice, or grandma crashing into it again. Unfortunately I think most people still see it as not only a waste of money for what value it provides (nearly 1 billion for something THAT slow and unreliable is lol) but also just a pointless novelty, particularly one that only helped property developers who were able to get in on the transit-oriented development philosophy the region/cities pushed. Like, even in major cities when people still choose to drive, they nonetheless understand the value of a metro system. The ION, though? I'd bet most people use it not because they choose to - it's "green", reliable, efficient, fast, safe, clean etc - but because of some sort of necessity such as a lack of car or inability to drive.

But yeah we dropped that baton, so oh well! The sparks look cool at least...