TransitBart
Senior Member
Good news. I stand by bashing people’s heads together.
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Waterloo Region Transit Developments (ION LRT, new terminal, GRT buses)
micheal_can
Senior Member
I know there is a plan to do a phase 2 of the line to connect to Cambridge. Besides that, are there other corridors that could use LRT?
innsertnamehere
Superstar
KWC is a small city of barely half a million people. It isn't exactly ripe for LRT corridors.. It is already the smallest city on the continent to have a rail based transit system.
ShonTron
Moderator
Member Bio
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Even when Kitchener-Waterloo had a street railway system, there were only three routes at its peak: the Main Line (which was extended and replaced by trolley buses in 1947), a suburban line to Bridgeport that was abandoned in the 1920s, and a short spur line to the CN Station from Downtown Kitchener. It's only because of the unusually linear form of the urban area, creating a logical single transit backbone, did LRT make sense. It will always be fed by crosstown buses, just like the KW Railway and the frequent trolley bus route once was.
I do not see any potential for a second LRT route in Waterloo Region.
innsertnamehere
Superstar
There is a reason the latest PC platform focused on transit in Toronto - following Kitchener getting it's LRT and Ottawa building it's phase 2, most of the viable rail lines elsewhere in the province will be built. The most desperate need for lines will shift to the GTA, where the province could probably drop $100 billion in new transit lines and still have lines that are viable projects. London could MAYBE have an LRT, but even then, its current BRT plan will probably be fine for the next 20-30 years.
Megaton327
Senior Member
KW is getting busy, and rapidly growing. I used to visit a friend there in the past few years, while I lived in downtown Toronto, typically using GO/VIA. Taking the iXpress bus from King & Victoria near the train station up to the north end of the city, their downtown area, Uptown Waterloo, was routinely jam packed. The bus was usually decently busy northbound at Victoria and would be at a crush load, leaving people waiting at the curb, at Uptown, remaining that busy until University. There were multiple bus routes running on that stretch and they came fairly frequently, it needed a capacity upgrade.
ShonTron makes a good point about the linearity of KW. That north south corridor has a huge level of demand for transit, and it will only increase as more condos and offices go up on King. I think the LRT, including Phase 2 to Cambridge, is borderline justified today, and will absolutely prove to be essential within 5-10 years, so this is a good case of transit being built at an appropriate time, rather than 10-20 years too late. But, indeed, I can't imagine any 2nd LRT route being at all necessary within the next several decades.
robmausser
Senior Member
LRT also made sense over BRT because they were able to utilize the Waterloo Spur rail line as well as the CN and CP corridors in the south part.
TOareaFan
Superstar
grew by 5.5% between the 2011 and 2016 census reports.
http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-r...&SearchType=Begins&SearchPR=01&B1=All&TABID=1
ever so slightly above the national avearge of 4.6% over the same period of time.
muller877
Senior Member
They also have had a LRT-focused growth plan. They focus the growth on the transit corridor and have slowly built the demand around some of the stations. They are saying 50% of the growth is along the LRT route:
https://rapidtransit.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/resourcesGeneral/IONStory_final.pdf (page 24)
And when you visit K-W you can see the explosion of retail, commercial, institutional and residential along the route. 20 years ago you didn't want to go to downtown Kitchener and uptown Waterloo was anchored by a derelict mall. Now people want to go to these areas even with the construction mess.
This is compared to Toronto where we have towers being built away from any transit (Humber Bay) and single family homes along a subway line (Danforth).
innsertnamehere
Superstar
Kitchener is growing as a metro area moderately, but it's urban intensification is quite rapid. The LRT corridor is changing extremely quickly
The only potential I see is an O-Train style LRT running along the Kitchener GO corridor, making additional stops as compared to GO. It would be relatively inexpensive to do (Ottawa's 5 station pilot was a mere $21 million in 2001), and would form a nice E-W axis. It could also be extended to Guelph relatively easily.
But I agree that I don't think we'll be seeing any more on-street electrified LRT in Waterloo Region after Phase II of the Ion is complete.
TOareaFan
Superstar
^how many different services can that corridor support?
crs1026
Superstar
K-W could just contract with GO to build additional stations in between the GO stations, and have the GO trains make additional stops. The fares for those additional stops could be the same as, or closer to, the regular KW Transit fare than a GO fare.
Not that anyone would ever seriously consider that.....
- Paul
TOareaFan
Superstar
They haven’t done that kind of fare arrangement in any of the cities that already have multiple stops.....not sure how it could be justified if it needed the added cost of adding stations?
crs1026
Superstar
I was just being ironic. (Sorry, just had to be a smartass).
Mr Tory thinks it will work just fine.
- Paul