timio
Active Member
Once per day in each direction, late at night northbound and early morning southbound. When the LRT is operational, it will be restricted to between 1AM and 5AM as they share the southbound LRT track from Erb through Northfield.
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Waterloo Region Transit Developments (ION LRT, new terminal, GRT buses)
Once per day in each direction, late at night northbound and early morning southbound. When the LRT is operational, it will be restricted to between 1AM and 5AM as they share the southbound LRT track from Erb through Northfield.
KevinT
Active Member
More footage of 503's delivery train heading through Kitchener Waterloo.
Crossing St Leger St, 2017-12-27 9:59 p.m.:
Passing through Waterloo Town Square 2017-12-27 10:24 p.m.:
Crossing St Leger St, 2017-12-27 9:59 p.m.:
Passing through Waterloo Town Square 2017-12-27 10:24 p.m.:
KevinT
Active Member
More footage of 503's delivery train heading through Kitchener Waterloo.
Crossing the Old Albert St trail in Waterloo, 2017-12-27 10:37 p.m.:
I got a kick out of the sign saying that the gates aren't working and to watch for trains, when clearly they are...
Crossing the Old Albert St trail in Waterloo, 2017-12-27 10:37 p.m.:
I got a kick out of the sign saying that the gates aren't working and to watch for trains, when clearly they are...
drum118
Superstar
lead82
Senior Member
An urban success story indeed. This will attract jobs and new residences and the density will support the new LRT. A positive cycle.
adrianaliu
Active Member
i really hope to see this replicated across the gta, private investment in the corridor has far exceeded public lrt costs before it even enters service.
drum118
Superstar
It has been stated that an LRT returns between $8-$17 for every $1 invested in it. An BRT can get up to $7 while a bus route is about $3. Subway can get up to $40, depending on its route and what it service, but most fall within the $20 range or less.
TransitBart
Senior Member
And yet London, Ontario city council could not see the point of LRT and cheaped out with BRT. The race is on! Hamilton and Kitchener and Waterloo will likely win hands down.
drum118
Superstar
micheal_can
Senior Member
Ion's success might be the push that the rest of Canada needs to see the success of an LRT in a small city. The cost is high, but if the returns are even higher, it becomes a no brainer. I can see Cambridge agreeing to Phase 2. I also see Brampton agreeing to the Hurontario LRT.
felix123
Active Member
Were it not for the few blue night TTC streetcars, I would unfortunately imagine that there's no chance of Ontario's LRTs running 24 hour service. Australia's capital cities are going through their golden infrastructure years, as Montreal and Toronto had in the 60s and 70s. They're also culturally-homogenous cities, in that everyone from the plebs to the patrician politicians like their rail transit ('transport', as they call it). It wouldn't matter much anyway if some residents of a particular city didn't agree, as those cities are also managed from the top down, that is, the federal government sets and collects all sales and income tax evenly and doles it out along with master planning orders, through the states into their cities' infrastructure. In fact, there is no city level of government in Sydney per se, just sort of a figurehead office to help cut ribbons and cakes as each lavish project is delivered, without democratic intervention. Brisbane and Gold Coast are in a similar situation. The other thing that sets Australia apart from Canada is how posh the government is - they love to splash cash as after years of being regarded as a technological backwater, Australia is out to prove, and they do, that they can build the sort of high-tech, transformative transit systems that their Asian neighbours keep churning out. Ontario will likely see their LRTs as better than what's in most of the US, manage their budgets similar to how one would manage a household budget (i.e. for a city, pennywise and poundfoolish, hence why our flexities aren't going to be as nice) and allow everyone on city council a chance to give input/repeatedly block these multibillion dollar investments, the subject of which they know next to nothing about. Then, when the LRT project is delivered decades after demand had already called for it, it will seem like such a huge achievement that it was built at all, that considering 24 hour service on top would be too much to ask.
But like I said, Toronto managed to do it with streetcars, so I guess there's at least a chance.
drum118
Superstar
DKsan
Active Member
If only, if only.
ION can't run 24 hours unless that chemical factory in Elmira, which uses the freight line the LRT runs on but in the early morning, shuts down. And yes, the Region of Waterloo owns the line, but the Township of Woolwich is in their purview.
I imagine that Eglinton and Finch West could run all night, but they may choose not to, especially for maintenance reasons on the Crosstown tunnel.
jordanmkasla2009
Active Member
They can't run revenue service 24 hours a day but they can run a couple ghost trains at night in the winter months by using the northbound track on the Waterloo spur for bidirectional traffic while freight uses the southbound track.
KevinT
Active Member
No can do. The freight spur joins the northbound track at the northwest corner of Waterloo Town Square, and only crosses over to the southbound track on the other side of the Erb/Caroline intersection near the Perimeter Institute. There's no way to separate freight traffic from Ion traffic other than with large blocks of time.