ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[Canard]

Searching the word "ion" in Twitter reveals a distressing fact: evidently it is now common parlance to replace "I don't" with the slang "ion".

I... I don't want to be on this planet anymore.

[Coke6pk]

I took a video, taking a look at the rail crossing standards at pedestrian crossings.

Pretty darn huge, compared to pedestrian scale.

Looks odd (aside from the shear size of the equipment for such a small crossing) that the "X" on the top of the sign appears smaller than I would expect on a full railway crossing.  Is it just the angle, or is it smaller?

Coke

[GtwoK]

Not sure of the progress of Allen when the last pictures posted were taken, but as of today (at least), there were curbs and pavement, as well as most sidewalks. The intersection was driveable as well, minus the portion blocked by track being laid.



New curbs are also in on the Northern side of the Uptown parking lot. Nothing on the southern side of the Ion / CN ROW yet, and track has yet to be touched.



The Caroline / Erb intersection as a whole has yet to be touched, minus a small pit in front of the church on Erb.



Strangely enough, there were crews working today, Victoria Day, at the King / Francis intersection. Even stranger still, they were still working at 9pm! Do these guys ever get a break?

[clasher]

Who wants a break when you're making double-time on a holiday? I've worked 14 or 18 hour shifts on holidays before, it's a lot of money.

[MacBerry]

Who wants a break when you're making double-time on a holiday? I've worked 14 or 18 hour shifts on holidays before, it's a lot of money.

I know this is a stupid question but I need the flak ... 

Why do we not have enough workers here in Ontario or Waterloo and these teams are brought in from Quebec? I could be quite wrong about this and therefore my assumption is wrong premised.

It is not a territorial question but a labour shortage question I am asking.

[GtwoK]

Something that just occurred to me - when I saw them working, they were still operating heavy machinery (back hoes, dump trucks, etc). Considering this was all at 9pm, should this have technically broken the noise bylaw? Or was the King / Francis intersection one that the city granted the noise exemption to?

[DHLawrence]

Generally it's one of three reasons: skillset, seniority, or money.

[Canard]

-Noise bylaw exemption passed a few weeks ago, so GrandLinq can work around the clock in UpTown.

-There was a 2nd hole (actually the first) at Erb/Caroline that is already filled in. I now bike through here almost daily and can confirm that every day a ton of work is going on here.

-Double time is awesome. Especially on a holiday. I talked to one employee from Aecon on Sunday who was out exploring the line on his own since he just got called in from Calgary.

-I wasn't aware that all of the crews were from Quebec - certainly everyone I've spoken to seemed "local English" - fully aware that means very little in a country as diverse as ours there are crews of specialists though from all over the world here, doing "their thing". You can't just have any Joe blow off the street stringing catenary or installing track switch gear. Curbs, yes (I was actually approached while taking pictures one day and offered a job to pour curbs on the spot! Guess I look the part. )

[clasher]

Who wants a break when you're making double-time on a holiday? I've worked 14 or 18 hour shifts on holidays before, it's a lot of money.

I know this is a stupid question but I need the flak ... 

Why do we not have enough workers here in Ontario or Waterloo and these teams are brought in from Quebec? I could be quite wrong about this and therefore my assumption is wrong premised.

It is not a territorial question but a labour shortage question I am asking.

There's a lot of factors at play. A number of skilled workers that used to have work in Ontario have long since moved to Alberta or at least work often enough out west that they don't often work here. Companies will keep good crews that they know instead of taking a chance on hiring new people. A company I work for would rather pay for my hotel in Bowmanville than call the hall for a worker, especially if it's a finicky job. It's less paperwork to keep existing workers than hire local ones. Local workers might already be working when they were hiring... I was working out of town when they might have hired more ironworkers for the Dutton street building. Some of the LRT work is pretty specialized and it's cheaper to just pay room and board for a few crews that do the specialized work than it is to train locals who then have no more LRTs to build and are left with a specialized skill set of limited use.

[clasher]

Ion delayed until 2018 due to Bombardier production problems. Ugh... I don't even want to see what the record will spew about this.

[KevinL]

It's happening, alas.

CBC reports due to Bombardier vehicle supply delays, LRT will not open until 2018

[tomh009]

   

[panamaniac]

So, fairly safe to assume mid-2018 or later based on Bombardier's track record so far?

[JoeKW]

Based on Bombardiers track record I'd start getting familiar with "Ion 2020"

[Chris]

I'm disappointed but not surprised at all. Back in 2014 when Bombardier was 40 cars behind on it's TTC order we saw this coming.