ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[danbrotherston]

Plus a nice, occasionally green coloured, bike lane.

[tomh009]

Very pleased to spot the welding crew by Full Circle just now. Once that is welded and the track embedded, it will close the final gap on Charles within the downtown loop!

The welds are done and ground down now.  Where is the concrete truck when we need it?

   

[KevinL]

Fresh drone video of the Waterloo Spur, on the official Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/BIsUXD5ghsw/

[Pheidippides]

Rails with rubber boot now extend all the way to George along King, mostly on wooden blocks for now, but the metal cross beams are all set to be installed.
   

[Canard]

Decided to take a detour this morning on my drive to the office, and man - they're flying on King... I thought that concrete pour yesterday at GRH was the first "centre" fill section... But nope! We now are nearly "concrete-complete" all the way from Wellington to GRH!

[Viewfromthe42]

If we wanted to, I imagine we could use the same melt-in elements as is used for the sharrows around town, to liven up the tracks, no? I'd be happy if you could see on the tracks which way the closest station was, so if you popped out at Union, you'd know whether to go to Allen or GRH. Or, you know, just some colour, let alone warning to drivers to never stop and/or park on rails.

[danbrotherston]

If we wanted to, I imagine we could use the same melt-in elements as is used for the sharrows around town, to liven up the tracks, no? I'd be happy if you could see on the tracks which way the closest station was, so if you popped out at Union, you'd know whether to go to Allen or GRH. Or, you know, just some colour, let alone warning to drivers to never stop and/or park on rails.

Standard paint would probably be sufficient.  The "melt-in" elements are used because they're durable, and can survive the wear of cars driving over them.  Hopefully that isn't a big issue on the LRT ROW.

Giving distance to the next station would be interesting though.

I do worry though, too much paint and colour can begin to look tacky sometimes.

[clasher]

Last night crews were working on the Ottawa-Courtland intersection. It was around midnight looks like they had a big hole dug and half the intersection was closed.

[GtwoK]

At the very least I'd like to see the cross hatch pattern in navigable intersections across the Ion ROW. That looked really neat in the video. Or even green bike lanes along the ENTIRE length of the bike lane. I don't know why we just have the green spots at intersections and the occasional symbol on the ground elsewhere.

[Viewfromthe42]

The green paint in bike lanes would be interesting, as if it was used as paint where only bicycles would go, and melt-in where cars would traverse, the paint would wear depending on how much cars would drive in the bicycle lane, giving a very visible indication of areas where protected bike lanes are needed (or just how badly they are needed in general).

That we only paint the bike boxes green is probably why I see so many drivers treating it as their space, because it's so rare that they don't make the association between colour and intent.

There was also a good deal of overnight work at King and Victoria last night. Don't know what, but I could hear it as I tried to sleep.

[KevinL]

I didn't want to linger in this heat, but I can confirm booting and tieing is underway by Full Circle where the welds were completed yesterday.

Also, a very large hole is open in the middle of King and Frederick. This heat doesn't stop the workers, it seems!

[Canard]

I didn't think today was too bad, but yeah - these folks deal with a 70-degree swing in their work climate. Hats off to them, for sure.

[danbrotherston]

The green paint in bike lanes would be interesting, as if it was used as paint where only bicycles would go, and melt-in where cars would traverse, the paint would wear depending on how much cars would drive in the bicycle lane, giving a very visible indication of areas where protected bike lanes are needed (or just how badly they are needed in general).

That we only paint the bike boxes green is probably why I see so many drivers treating it as their space, because it's so rare that they don't make the association between colour and intent.

There was also a good deal of overnight work at King and Victoria last night. Don't know what, but I could hear it as I tried to sleep.

The bike lane striping already gives a pretty good indication of this, although there are places where the striping is worn off, cars frequently enter the bike lane, but places where it isn't worn off, cars either don't drive in the bike lane, or always drive entirely in the bike lane.  Nonetheless, it's a decent proxy.

I actually would have the opposite comment about the bike box, I think the ones painted green have far better driver behaviour, they more frequently yield before entering the box, as compared with the ones that are unpainted.

That would be the one argument for not painting the bike lanes, is that colour can be added in places where additional cueing is needed for drivers, if you put it everywhere, then it not longer stands out.

Note, cueing is different from protection.  Cueing as I'm defining it, would be for places where drivers are confused or inattentive, not where they're intentionally breaking the rules.  I.e., I would use green to colour bike boxes because drivers don't know to stop at them, and I'd use them at intersections to remind drivers to look, but in bike lanes, drivers already know they're not supposed to be there, they are simply choosing to.

[danbrotherston]

   

Grandlink has constructed a fairly elaborate pedestrian crossing around Allen.


   

The spur line tracks are still disconnected at King.  I assume they don't have to have them put back over the weekend.


   

Road closed sign at Frederick and King.  Clearly some discontentment with the construction.

[KevinL]

In a somewhat related category, the City of Kitchener has put up a series of videos about safety around construction zones.