Grand River Transit

[neonjoe]

Well there are certainly cases where the perfect is the enemy of the good it if turns out that nothing at all happens. We got something for stage 1, if it had been proposed to be the optimal solution we may have nothing at all.

[tomh009]

I don't know if replacing the Freeport bridge is desirable. It is a heritage bridge, "widely recognized as the most important bridge in the Region" (https://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg...px?id=8068).

That’s really interesting, I didn’t know it was considered a heritage feature. I’ve always just viewed it as a little sketchy since it has been visually deteriorating since I moved to the region myself. It looks like the bridge will be celebrating its 100th birthday next year, too. 

I’m interested to see what the expected lifespan is after they’ve finished rehabilitating it. If/when this bridge does need to be replaced, it’s simple design should be pretty replicable. It would look even nicer with some rail tracks running on it 😎

The Bridgeport Bridge is already a replica of the Freeport Bridge, built about 10 years later. 🙂

[the_conestoga_guy]

Putting the tracks on the bridge is a bad idea for many reasons. They've already spent a ton of money on the plans so far, I'd hate to see them ignite even more of our tax dollars. They would have to re-engineer the plans already made. I imagine it would also require expropriating a bunch of property in order to do that. It would result in a lot more work, likely slower speeds and mixing with traffic. The plan they have now - to go above Fairway Road, run parallel to Highway 8, down Preston Heights over the Speed River and onward makes the most sense. It'll be costly - over 4 billion - but it will be one of the fastest parts of the LRT system due to it having its own elevated track and right of way beside the highway (at least until Preston Station where it'll unfortunately have to operate in and as vehicular traffic). Going down King Street and over the bridge would be slow due to the tight turns it'd need to make and then the gradients along the Grand River Valley.

Let's try to not cheap out on it again...

Just to clarify, I meant putting separated tracks on a replacement bridge. I recognize that it would be an awful idea for a million reasons to plop tracks onto the existing bridge. 

This is all pie-in-the-sky anyway. I just want to plant to idea into the brains of whatever Region officials are lurking this forum

[danbrotherston]

Putting the tracks on the bridge is a bad idea for many reasons. They've already spent a ton of money on the plans so far, I'd hate to see them ignite even more of our tax dollars. They would have to re-engineer the plans already made. I imagine it would also require expropriating a bunch of property in order to do that. It would result in a lot more work, likely slower speeds and mixing with traffic. The plan they have now - to go above Fairway Road, run parallel to Highway 8, down Preston Heights over the Speed River and onward makes the most sense. It'll be costly - over 4 billion - but it will be one of the fastest parts of the LRT system due to it having its own elevated track and right of way beside the highway (at least until Preston Station where it'll unfortunately have to operate in and as vehicular traffic). Going down King Street and over the bridge would be slow due to the tight turns it'd need to make and then the gradients along the Grand River Valley.

Let's try to not cheap out on it again...

Just to clarify, I meant putting separated tracks on a replacement bridge. I recognize that it would be an awful idea for a million reasons to plop tracks onto the existing bridge. 

This is all pie-in-the-sky anyway. I just want to plant to idea into the brains of whatever Region officials are lurking this forum

I believe at one point, they considered converting the existing bridge into a cycling bridge and building a new combined road/LRT bridge.

[nms]

It has a length of 160 meters, with seven spans and six piers. Two lanes of cars can cross the bridge and the 6 foot wide sidewalk is a unique feature found on this bowstring arch bridge.

Despite the 6-foot sidewalk being included in 1925, it appears that there is no pedestrian path to the south of this bridge.

[ac3r]

I would guess that was because when they made the bridge, there was really nothing around there besides a small number of homes, industry, institutional (the old tuberculous sanatorium) and farms. It's possible there was a dirt path or even concrete one that connected to the sidewalk because people still would have walked around there, but I don't imagine it saw too many people. I tried to look for evidence of any sidewalks on the old aerial maps, but they're far too low resolution to see such details.

These days it's just used as a connection for the Walter Bean and other trails that follow the river so at least it's still useful. Beats wading through the water hah. It's not deep, but pretty nasty.

[KevinL]

UW's NDP group wants night service to return; it was removed during the pandemic and still hasn't come back. They've created a petition. https://www.change.org/p/bring-back-late-night-transit

Looks like this was successful, the 'Late Night Loop' route 91 will return in September.

[timc]

That's good news.

I just want to call out the weird photo that CBC used for the story. They show passengers disembarking from a Route 200 iXpress bus, which hasn't run in years. And it's at the Cambridge Centre, far from Waterloo. Time to update the stock photo library.

I do appreciate that CBC notes that the service was dropped in 2019, while The Record keeps saying that it was a pandemic cut.

[SF22]

I haven't been able to find an actual map of where the old Route 91 actually went - I never used this one, as a student. Does anyone remember the general layout of it?

It's a good first step to better nighttime/overnight transit in the city. I'd like to see the ION run for longer, and with better frequency than 30 minutes.

[danbrotherston]

I haven't been able to find an actual map of where the old Route 91 actually went - I never used this one, as a student. Does anyone remember the general layout of it?

It's a good first step to better nighttime/overnight transit in the city. I'd like to see the ION run for longer, and with better frequency than 30 minutes.

Well I thought it would be in the wayback machine (which goes back to 2017) but for some reason I cannot find it on the list of schedules.

https://web.archive.org/web/201706040705...dules.aspx

Strange.

In any case, my recollection was that it ran from the Charles St. terminal in DTK up King, across University, through the campus, and then through the neighbourhood north of the campus....but that recollection is almost 10 years old at this point, so I'd say I have a low level of confidence. It definitely ran uptown to downtown though.

[nms]

This is the only Route 91 clue that I could find from a cached copy of the CBTDB Wiki from May 4, 2022. The first entry about the route was from November 2012 and "Late Night Loop" is used before that:

91 Late Night Loop is a conventional bus route operated by Grand River Transit. The route serves Charles Street Transit Terminal, Grand River Hospital, Uptown Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University, University of Waterloo, and the student-dominant communities of Lakeshore and Columbia.

This route operates on Thursday, Friday and Saturday late nights only.

The fact that it started at the Charles Street Transit Terminal would suggest that the driver and bus was pulled from another route which ended at the terminal at 1:00am. I can't remember if Route 9 connected to the Transit

[midriser]

I haven't been able to find an actual map of where the old Route 91 actually went - I never used this one, as a student. Does anyone remember the general layout of it?

It's a good first step to better nighttime/overnight transit in the city. I'd like to see the ION run for longer, and with better frequency than 30 minutes.

Well I thought it would be in the wayback machine (which goes back to 2017) but for some reason I cannot find it on the list of schedules.

https://web.archive.org/web/201706040705...dules.aspx

Strange.

In any case, my recollection was that it ran from the Charles St. terminal in DTK up King, across University, through the campus, and then through the neighbourhood north of the campus....but that recollection is almost 10 years old at this point, so I'd say I have a low level of confidence. It definitely ran uptown to downtown though.

It's under the 7 Mainline schedule at that archived link - on the map it's the grey loop north of campus. In the schedule itself it's listed at the bottom of the Saturday section. I used to ride it when I was student 10+ years ago as well, and can confirm your recollection is correct.

[SF22]

I'll be interested to see how much they tweak the old route to fit the new city - obviously Charles St Terminal doesn't exist anymore, and there might be different demand areas around the campuses based on where new buildings have gone up.

[KevinL]

Proposed changes to north Cambridge routes that connect from Sportsworld; 72 would be renumbered 62 and run with full-size buses, and a new BusPLUS 78 would operate along Fountain to the airport. https://www.grt.ca/en/about-grt/route-72...anges.aspx

[dunkalunk]

The BusPlus route to the airport make sense. Not a huge fan of the circuitous route from Reuter Campus to Sportsworld. Hopefully the college keeps their shuttle.