ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[panamaniac]

A possibly stupid question. Once this is completed, won't most pedestrians use the entire space (sidewalk, ION ROW, bus platform (will it be elevated all the way east?) as a sidewalk? That will leave only the stretch of sidewalk on the Francis St end as narrow. I ask this in all seriousness - I hope someone is not going to tell me that there will be some physical barrier between the sidewalk and the ION ROW.

[Markster]

People will use the ION lane as a sidewalk probably just as much as they use car lanes as one, which by my estimation is "only under heavy sidewalk crowding"*.

Being a street running section, I don't see them installing a fence, unless it becomes a problem. But it would be a real shame to make it impossible to cross the street.


[edit] *Also... possibly at night if they really run the LRT only every half hour.

[Canard]

Shouldn't you cross at the crosswalks at Francis or Victoria?

[panamaniac]

You definitely should, Canard.

[Markster]

Crossing the street mid-block, contrary to popular belief, is not illegal.

[Canard]

But I don't think it's the kind of behaviour we want to encourage. I'd be all for a knee-high "discouragement barrier" here. Last thing we need is clever people thinking they can dart out in front of an LRV and then get smacked by a bus.

[panamaniac]

But I don't think it's the kind of behaviour we want to encourage. I'd be all for a knee-high "discouragement barrier" here. Last thing we need is clever people thinking they can dart out in front of an LRV and then get smacked by a bus.

Now there we have a fundamental difference of opinion.  I could not label that as "clever". 

[kps]

That image is definitely one of the televisions we had when I was a kid. From top to bottom: the "rabbit ears" antennae; the Electrohome logo spot; the tiny black-and-white cathode ray screen; the channel-change and fine-tuning knobs; the built-in stand.

Grandlinq's version does it better.

   

Oh, my god.  Please tell me the reason why someone felt the need to invent their own version of a Tram/LRV icon.  A Google Image Search for "Tram Icon" produces hundreds of icons, all of which are infinitely better than this garbage (well, maybe not these).  This... this is just hideous.

C-C-Canard-kun doesn't like me?!? Baka!

   

[Markster]

C-C-Canard-kun doesn't like me?!? Baka!

That is amazing. I need to retweet that.

[tvot]

Walking back from Vincenzo's on Saturday I saw them welding tracks together on Caroline. I'd never seen the welding going on.... I should have tried a couple more photos as this one doesn't quite capture it right. I probably missed other welding photos way back in this thread because I didn't realize that this is how it's done. Pretty cool.

   

[KevinL]

That's the equipment for a thermite weld, for the record.

[Viewfromthe42]

The intersection drawing at King and Victoria... is it missing some any-turn lanes? Some lanes seem to be straight-right only, such that you do indeed need to accommodate left turns at Francis, because if you are heading east on King, you can't turn left to head north on victoria...

[timc]

I hadn't noticed it before, but there are no left turns at all at King and Victoria according to that drawing.

[BuildingScout]

Yeah, they clearly aligned things based on making sure they could fit in the King-to-Francis left turn bay, which is frankly unnecessary.

Is that a left bay for turning to Francis or the straight through lane with the right one being a dedicated right turn onto Francis?

[Canard]

Crossing the street mid-block, contrary to popular belief, is not illegal.

While that's technically true, it's required that if you're reasonably close to a crosswalk, you use it. It's sort of the "don't be a dick" thing. I really don't think it's fair to the LRV operators to give them a heart attack by darting out in front of trains because you can't be bothered to walk another 30 m.