ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[Bob_McBob]

CTV jumped the gun reporting on the update before that tidbit.

[tomh009]

I'm seeing a light at the end of the tunnel … and it might be an in-service LRT coming our way!

"Spring" is good for me. It seems that they now have a pretty good handle on what needs to be done before we go live.

[Canard]

CTV jumped the gun reporting on the update before that tidbit.

It's your fault - you kept clicking "Refresh" all day on the Regional webpage, and posted it here, first!

[plam]

.....

• All rolling stock vehicle testing required to start revenue service is complete
  
• Reliability of vehicles is not yet “ready for service”
  
• Overall reliability of the vehicles continues to be an issue. Bombardier needs to complete significant modifications to address reliability issues. This totals approximately 50 to 100 hours per vehicle of critical work that needs to completed before service starts and 200 to 250 hours of work that can be completed after service starts. These types of issues can be expected with an initial run of vehicles. 
  
• Preliminary Acceptance Certificate (PAC) and Final Acceptance Certificate (FAC) processes still need to be completed.
  

To begin service, vehicles must go through an acceptance process. Significantly, no vehicles are yet fully ready for service, in that they have not yet achieved Preliminary Acceptance Certificate (PAC) or Final Acceptance Certificate (FAC).

Thanks so much for posting!

I am confused here, these two highlighted statements seem to be in direct disagreement.

"All rolling stock vehicle testing required to start revenue service is complete"

And multiple statements explaining the work left to be done on vehicles explicitly before revenue service and discussing reliability issues of the vehicles suggests that stock vehicles are not completed testing for revenue service.

What does the first statement mean?

I think the sentence makes much more sense if we read it as "All rolling stock vehicles required to start revenue service are complete". Maybe that's what they meant, maybe that's not.

[Spokes]

Just happy to be along for the ride. it’s been an incredible journey. I’ll be a little sad when it’s over, a sentiment I’m sure many who were actually responsible for bringing it to life will feel, too.

It's going to be crazy once it's actually up and running.

Remember when it was just an idea?  Then all of the opposition in the 2010 and 2014 elections?  Then finally getting the vote to go ahead with it.  It's been a heck of a ride.

[danbrotherston]

Just happy to be along for the ride. it’s been an incredible journey. I’ll be a little sad when it’s over, a sentiment I’m sure many who were actually responsible for bringing it to life will feel, too.

It's going to be crazy once it's actually up and running.

Remember when it was just an idea?  Then all of the opposition in the 2010 and 2014 elections?  Then finally getting the vote to go ahead with it.  It's been a heck of a ride.

Lol, when it contributed to my choice to stay here in 2010, I never thought I'd still be waiting for it in 2019.

[Spokes]

ION service date to be announced near end of March

Regional Council briefly touched on the LRT update in their meeting, but little was discussed beyond the hope of a service date announcement.

"We are hoping, near the end of March, to actually be in a position to announce the start date for the service," Regional Councillor Tom Galloway said.

The last update for the ION service was set for spring 2019, though no specific date was given.

https://www.kitchenertoday.com/local-new...ch-1266896

[Bytor]

Has anybody heard anything lately about expected ridership levels for ION? original estimates prior to 2014 were 25,000 a day on average, then at some point that was changed to 27,000 a day when projections for bus ridership were reach a few years early. Of course, that was before the downfalls in 2014, 2015, and 2016. ION aBRT introduced in 2015 grew from ~2,000/day in 2015 to ~2,700/day in 2017 based on emails I got from GRT, but they haven't responded to my requests about 7+200 ridership since 2014.

[trainspotter139]

Has anybody heard anything lately about expected ridership levels for ION? original estimates prior to 2014 were 25,000 a day on average, then at some point that was changed to 27,000 a day when projections for bus ridership were reach a few years early. Of course, that was before the downfalls in 2014, 2015, and 2016. ION aBRT introduced in 2015 grew from ~2,000/day in 2015 to ~2,700/day in 2017 based on emails I got from GRT, but they haven't responded to my requests about 7+200 ridership since 2014.

Considering they haven't started posting this year's monthly ridership numbers yet I have a feeling some resources are tied up planning launch of LRT.

[jason897]

From the radio and my own observations it seems we have 504,505,508,509,511 out today! Indication of progress with more than 4 LRVs?
(I’ve been told my Dec observation was likely inaccurate, which is totally possible)

[Bytor]

Considering they haven't started posting this year's monthly ridership numbers yet I have a feeling some resources are tied up planning launch of LRT.

I would hope GRT staff are not that tied up. They've had their new routes planned for more than a year by now and shouldn't be doing more than tweaks. Besides, they have predefined queries (It looked a lot like an MS Access app accessing an MSSSQL server) that they just punch in dates and other parameters to get numbers, so the only work they need to do is make sure they have sanitised the data (e.g. accounted misaligned people counters). That is something they'd need to do to work on any such tweaks anyways and even more necessary for bigger changes. So putting the data on the performance measures web page is just emailing the number to the website team. I'd be very surprised if the GRT staff are directly editing the web page.

[taylortbb]

So putting the data on the performance measures web page is just emailing the number to the website team. I'd be very surprised if the GRT staff are directly editing the web page.

I'm going to have to surprise you then. Staff at the region definitely are expected to directly update the website, through their terrible eSolutionsGroup content management system. The website would be in much better shape if there was a web team making the edits.

[Canard]

From the radio and my own observations it seems we have 504,505,508,509,511 out today! Indication of progress with more than 4 LRVs?
(I’ve been told my Dec observation was likely inaccurate, which is totally possible)

At least this afternoon, they were only doing stuff in the yard (and one or two out on the alignment). Lots and lots and lots of yard play.

[ijmorlan]

So putting the data on the performance measures web page is just emailing the number to the website team. I'd be very surprised if the GRT staff are directly editing the web page.

I'm going to have to surprise you then. Staff at the region definitely are expected to directly update the website, through their terrible eSolutionsGroup content management system. The website would be in much better shape if there was a web team making the edits.

Sadly, I am not at all surprised to hear that. However, the way to make it better is not for the “web team” to update the site, but for the stats on the site to update directly from the source data. Automatic data processing is, after all, what computers are for. And the Region (and every other medium to large organization) should have employees of its own who are capable of setting up such automatic systems. Every company is an IT company now.

[KevinL]