ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[Canard]

I love the walls. I hate that the station names are centred and all-caps. Hideous. It should be mixed case and right (or left) justified.

[Canard]

I stopped by both the OMSF and Columbia St. construction sites this morning on my way in to the office.

   

   

   

   

   

Still fuming about the fonts on the station walls.

[Canard]

The new smaller structure that has just gone up is the Train Inspection, Testing, Commissioning Building (blue rectangle).  The red rectangle is the primary building.

   

[KevinL]

Agreed that the font is a poor choice, but that may yet get refined. I don't mind centred all-caps, personally, but on the Laurier and Central stations the second line (which is more of a subtitle) should be in smaller type.

[KevinL]

Meanwhile, in the Fairway hydro corridor, we have an unusual (and temporary) sense of openness.

[Markster]

I love the walls. I hate that the station names are centred and all-caps. Hideous. It should be mixed case and right (or left) justified.

I think the ALL-CAPS is fine.  It's generally more readable from a distance, which is important.
However, my nit-picks are:
1) "University of Waterloo", "Allen", and "Willis Way" are on high-contrast backgrounds that make them look off-centred (Allen), and difficult to read
2) "Grand River Hospital" barely fits in one line, and should be split into two.

On the other side of the spectrum, "Conestoga" and "Kitchener Market" look brilliant.

For everyone's reference, here's the overview:
   

[mpd618]

It would be nice if the Region hired a professional designer at least on a short-term contract to fix some of that up.

[Canard]

It would be nice if the Region hired a professional designer at least on a short-term contract to fix some of that up.

THIS. I really hope that whoever made the .PDF with all the concepts was the one who put the text on and it was a last minute thing. I can't imagine anyone with any sense of graphic design would have permitted such an atrocity.

[notmyfriends]

Fix it, huh... It should all be like the stone ones. I'll take my contract money now.

[Canard]

Uh...?

[jamincan]

The stone ones are my least favourite designs, actually, though that might be due to stone being hard to render well.

Does anyone know why they have two separate tracks connecting the MSF to the southbound track? It appears it's intended that they operate in opposite directions, but I can't figure out why it would be necessary to configure it like that.

[ijmorlan]

The stone ones are my least favourite designs, actually, though that might be due to stone being hard to render well.

Does anyone know why they have two separate tracks connecting the MSF to the southbound track? It appears it's intended that they operate in opposite directions, but I can't figure out why it would be necessary to configure it like that.

I believe that is the plan from the RFP documents, and it is only representative, not the actual plan for the MSF. Having said that, I agree the double connection to the southbound track (and no North-pointing connection to the northbound track) simply makes no sense. Actually, the entire part of the track layout connecting to the main line makes little sense to me. I’m not an actual track designer, so I may be missing something (and would love to be corrected by an actual expert), but I think I have some sense of what moves are required in normal operation and I don’t understand why the design shown would ever be committed to paper.

I have seen a more up-to-date plan for the MSF, but unfortunately I can’t remember where, so I can’t cite it. It might have been on this board. My recollection is the more up-to-date plan doesn’t have a loop-around track and connects quite differently to the main line. Also, buildings are in slightly different locations, so don’t be surprised if a careful examination of the RFP plan doesn’t match up in detail with what is actually being built.

[Canard]

Yeah, I wondered about that - the main hall design doesn't match the plan and is much closer to the Dutton Drive turnaround than would be possible if the track configuration was like that.

I've spent many nights looking at Google Maps satellite views of train maintenance facilities all over the world (but mostly Japan). A lot of them do incorporate a way to run a train in a complete loop almost as a mini "test track". My favourite one (and I've been there several times, to tour the facilities and go for rides) is the Morgantown PRT In Morgantown, West Virginia. It's the wackiest system you can imagine.

[ijmorlan]

I have seen a more up-to-date plan for the MSF, but unfortunately I can’t remember where, so I can’t cite it. It might have been on this board. My recollection is the more up-to-date plan doesn’t have a loop-around track and connects quite differently to the main line. Also, buildings are in slightly different locations, so don’t be surprised if a careful examination of the RFP plan doesn’t match up in detail with what is actually being built.

I found it:

http://www.slideshare.net/rideion/wlrt-c...sf20140806

Low-resolution, unfortunately. Also, I don’t know if this is fully current. Although I will say I think the buildings are being built closer to where this plan has them. I wonder if the newly-constructed track near there is the northbound track, or the yard track that runs parallel to the mainline tracks.

[Canard]

Cool, thanks for posting that - I dug around and here's the actual PDF of that notice:  http://rideion.ca/notices/01-WLRT-COM-No...-08-06.pdf

   

This makes a lot more sense.  So the new steel building up closest to the tracks is the washer.

This new plan looks a lot simpler - no runaround loop at the far end, which means trains are First-In, Last-Out on the storage tracks.

Here's Charlotte's maintenance facility:

   

...and Calgary's Oliver Bowen Maintenance Centre, the largest of their 5 shops, with storage for 60+ trains:

   

And the aforementioned Morgantown PRT's Maintenance Facility... it actually has two shops!