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Waterloo Region Transit Developments (ION LRT, new terminal, GRT buses)

jordanmkasla2009 said:
Those stations are all major transfer points. ION uses traffic signal priority so very little stopping at traffic signals. this map also doesn't tell the full story about what the line will look like. There's a lot more grade separation planned for stage 2View attachment 241741
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I believe that long section is most "off road" as in following a road to one side on the river side, so no intersection involvement (3 way intersection and LRT on the side without a street) etc

However you would think that area would want at least one stop somewhere.
 
robmausser said:
However you would think that area would want at least one stop somewhere.
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Take a look at the area it actually runs through. Theres nothing there. A stop just before crossing the river into Preston might eventually be useful, but you'd also be talking about a full elevated station to do that.
 
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Bureaucromancer said:
Take a look at the area it actually runs through. Theres nothing there. A stop just before crossing the river into Preston might eventually be useful, but you'd also be talking about a full elevated station to do that.
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Perhaps a park-and-ride then? They have these in the outskirts of Edmonton/Calgary LRTs.

I could see a large catchment of Preston people who would normally drive to work in Cambridge/Kitchener/Waterloo parking and taking the LRT.
 
Park and ride with easy 401 access would be nice, but Sportsworld is pretty good for that without having to get into major interchange reconstructions.

Within Preston one hopes GRT can manage shuttles well enough that park and ride won't really be needed.
 
Bureaucromancer said:
Within Preston one hopes GRT can manage shuttles well enough that park and ride won't really be needed.
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Based on their botched bus integration in Waterloo and Kitchener, particularly at Kitchener Central, Laurier Waterloo Park, UW, Northfield, Uptown Waterloo, Block line, and to an extent, Conestoga mall, I'm going to assume that's a no.
 
Its been a while now, so I thought i'd ask someone who takes the ION regularily: now that the PTC system is active on the non-street portions of the ION, does it operate faster than when it did at opening?
 
robmausser said:
Man, whats the hold up?
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While it's nowhere near Ottawa-tier, there's been a few persistent issues with the signals which are probably a contributing factor. Last fall regional council also decided not to pressure for 8 minute headways right away as there haven't been significant post-launch crowding issues. The issue is that those extra 2 minutes create a huge knock on effect for transfers, and the system is now very metro-like in the sense of being transfer-oriented and focusing on bus-tram route integration to get around. Once 8-minute headways happen I suspect ridership will jump again as it will more decisively eclipse some parallel/"competing" north-south bus routes.
 
I listened to the radio scanner for a long time this afternoon and it sounded like today's testing was going way better than the May 21 test. A few operators reported coming in slightly late to Fairway "due to ATP" and one bashfully reported that ATP caught him in an over-speed but that it "recovered smoothly".

By comparison, during the May test many operators were reporting the dreaded Hotel-Hotel code, basically when ATP stopped them in their tracks due to imaginary perils and they had to manually override it at limp mode speeds until they passed the next impedance bond in the signal system, thus being allowed to resume normal operation. Some in the May test even reported getting stopped halfway through a grade crossing or intersection by the HH code. I am very pleased to report that I heard nothing like that at all in my 2.5 hours of listening today!
 
I listened to the scanner again yesterday and heard ATP mentioned a few times, so it doesn't seem to be just isolated test days anymore. I wonder if they'll publicly announce when they're running on it or if it will just happen in the background.
 
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