ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[KevinL]

Charles and Ontario will close on Monday for an estimated 10 days. Hopefully no surprises like they found at Gaukel.

[tomh009]

Queen Street next?

[Markster]

Finally, the routing of 12 different bus routes in front of my apartment will be justified.

[tomh009]

Finally, the routing of 12 different bus routes in front of my apartment will be justified.

Benton Street, I presume?

[Spokes]

Just out of curiousity, have the buses for the BRT been decided yet?  I'd love to see something modern as opposed to just a differently branded bus.

That would be fantastic.  IMO it does two things, one it makes them look like the LRT trains, two it differentiates them between the aBRT buses and normal GRT buses

[Spokes]

Charles and Ontario will close on Monday for an estimated 10 days. Hopefully no surprises like they found at Gaukel.

I can't see how we shouldn't expect surprises.  It's only a block away!

[Markster]

Finally, the routing of 12 different bus routes in front of my apartment will be justified.

Benton Street, I presume?

The other two: Queen and Courtland.

I've got 16 bus routes, after counting it up:
1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 8, 8, 8, 11, 15, 22, 23, 24, 25, 200
Of those, only 7 make the turn on to Benton:
1, 4, 7, 8, 8, 15, 23

Basically, every 15 minutes, there's 5 minutes of buses idling in front of my window as they wait at the Queen/Courtland traffic light.

[timio]

Work seems to be progressing fairly quickly on Caroline north of the Laurel Creek culvert. Digging just started earlier this week and they already have storm sewer access pipes in place.

[timc]

The Columbia St. crossing is open now.

I know I'm playing armchair quarterback here, but it is hard to see where three weeks of work went here. If the region had a record of timely completions, I would say nothing, but given that RoW seems to be slow central (ask 144 Park) I'll put it out there. Why three weeks on a simple double crossing with culvert?

I'm not really impressed with the record so far. But in this case, I think it was a combination of a couple of factors. First of all, service needed to be maintained for the tanker that runs to Elmira and back daily. So if there was any work that couldn't be done during the day, it needed to be scheduled for the round-the-clock weekend work. Secondly, there was poor weather for one of those weekends which delayed the progress. Other than that, I'm not aware of any significant issues that were encountered which would delay completion.

I'm scared of what will happen when University Avenue is closed. It would be nice if Albert could be open before University is closed, but I don't know the timeline for that work.

[Markster]

At least University has lightly-trafficked Seagram relatively nearby to support detours.

I'm wondering where the City's concrete contractor is. The sidewalks and Laurel trail are still incomplete, and it's been quiet these two days. The Iron Horse Trail at William is also awaiting some concrete work to make it not-a-giant-hazard.

[numberguy]

Yes, I'm not impressed by the execution and the lack of transparency with ION, so far. GrandLinq's been flubbing the ball and the amount blacked out material in the agreement between the Region and GrandLinq makes me queasy, along with Bombardier's obvious lack of focus with the rail side of their business.

[Canard]

1) They are sending out almost weekly, very detailed updates of exactly what's going on, where (maybe you aren't subscribed to this?)
2) There has been no official word about the production of FLEXITY Freedom, and all the "doom and gloom" about delays is speculation based on the FLEXITY Outlook order for Toronto, nothing official. The region has consistently maintained that everything is on schedule.

[mpd618]

Yes, I'm not impressed by the execution and the lack of transparency with ION, so far.    GrandLinq's been flubbing the ball and the amount blacked out material in the agreement between the Region and GrandLinq makes me queasy, along with Bombardier's obvious lack of focus with the rail side of their business.

It's all doom and gloom, really? As Canard mentions, the frequent construction updates make it quite clear what they are working on and what the delays are. Whether or not some portions are behind, the overall pace of construction is pretty astounding, in my opinion.

2) There has been no official word about the production of FLEXITY Freedom, and all the "doom and gloom" about delays is speculation based on the FLEXITY Outlook order for Toronto, nothing official.  The region has consistently maintained that everything is on schedule.

I think it's fair to question whether that's actually true, given Bombardier's well-documented problems delivering vehicles. Their troubles do not have to do with things specific to Toronto's streetcar, they have to do with handling production that is combined across sites - and Bombardier has showed enough incompetence in this regard as an organization to warrant concern for Waterloo Region getting its 14 vehicles by next year.

[Canard]

They put out thousands of rail vehicles per year, and nobody writes articles on the ones that aren't delayed.  Nobody even cared that they've started rolling out the brand new cab cars for the GO Bilevels.  While I am concerned and worried, nobody (GrandLinq, the Region, the Rapid Transit team) has ever said what the timeline was for our vehicles, other than they should arrive at the OMSF in late 2016. I think I asked Bombardier directly about this on twitter a year or two ago and they said they thought production would start in late 2015.

[numberguy]

1) They are sending out almost weekly, very detailed updates of exactly what's going on, where (maybe you aren't subscribed to this?)
2) There has been no official word about the production of FLEXITY Freedom, and all the "doom and gloom" about delays is speculation based on the FLEXITY Outlook order for Toronto, nothing official.  The region has consistently maintained that everything is on schedule.

Check out the document that mpd618 helpfully posted the link to.    The amount of redaction would put make Homeland Security proud.   I am highly skeptical about the escalation factor, particularly the labour portion.

Also, here's an example of GrandLinq's professionalism:
http://imgur.com/KWBF8Za

Not to mention the helpful habit of putting up road closure signs that aren't actually accurate:
http://www.waterloochronicle.ca/news/fru...ion-signs/

With regards to Bombardier, the TTC brass met with them and basically got told GTFO, take your measly $50M penalty on the $1.2 billion contract.   And it's not only a TTC issue:
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/transpor...order.html

Bombardier is actively looking to sell (at least part of, maybe all of) its rail division to finance its aviation division.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on...e22457908/
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on...e25075865/