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

Lol thanks. I thought only the crosstown has one.
Think of the OMSF as a bus garage, a streetcar barn, or as a subway yard. You need one to store and maintain vehicles, and a new one is always required if a new line has different characteristics (ie standard gauge vs Toronto gauge) or if a new line is not connected to existing yards.
 
Question. Frequency isn't going to be great on ION according to some of you here. Do they have the room in their facilities to accommodate more LRVs if they got federal or provincial grants?
 
Question. Frequency isn't going to be great on ION according to some of you here. Do they have the room in their facilities to accommodate more LRVs if they got federal or provincial grants?
Yes the yard can handle more cars down the road as needed.

Been some time I have looked at the yard and the photos I have shot as well stand to be corrected, but you can get 2/3 more tracks in the yard to hold more cars.

I haven't follow phase II that closely, but there should be a small yard at the south end to deal with dead heading to/from the south end.

Having anything more than 15 minute headway 7 days a week defeat putting transit first and getting people to use it. Peak service should be 8-10 minutes, though it would be nice to see 5.
 
Yes the yard can handle more cars down the road as needed.

Been some time I have looked at the yard and the photos I have shot as well stand to be corrected, but you can get 2/3 more tracks in the yard to hold more cars.

Per ArcGIS there are 3 storage tracks, each with a straight section approximately 210 meters in length. There's room for 3 more tracks, but they'd be shorter due to the approach geometries with the shortest having about 135 metres of usable straightaway. I took the largest screenshot I could get on a 1080p screen, then cropped and rotated it accordingly (attached).
 

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Yes the yard can handle more cars down the road as needed.

Been some time I have looked at the yard and the photos I have shot as well stand to be corrected, but you can get 2/3 more tracks in the yard to hold more cars.

I haven't follow phase II that closely, but there should be a small yard at the south end to deal with dead heading to/from the south end.

Having anything more than 15 minute headway 7 days a week defeat putting transit first and getting people to use it. Peak service should be 8-10 minutes, though it would be nice to see 5.
I don't think the city can realistically increase service any more than 8-10 minutes at most. At UW, drivers always report problems of signals taking at least a minute for the gates to go down and another minute for a train to pass. Having 5 minute frequencies would mean that in some cases, there's only be like 1 minute of free-flowing traffic before the gates would have to come down again. Personally, it could work if the LRT becomes viable enough that 2-car trains aren't enough (in which case, there would be a disproportionate amount of people using the trains over those driving).

Per ArcGIS there are 3 storage tracks, each with a straight section approximately 210 meters in length. There's room for 3 more tracks, but they'd be shorter due to the approach geometries with the shortest having about 135 metres of usable straightaway. I took the largest screenshot I could get on a 1080p screen, then cropped and rotated it accordingly (attached).
I remember reading a report issued by the City of Waterloo that showed room for something like 3-4 more tracks for the OMSF. Based on that image, it seems pretty fair to assume that there is room for those tracks to exist in the future if needed.
 
I don't think the city can realistically increase service any more than 8-10 minutes at most. At UW, drivers always report problems of signals taking at least a minute for the gates to go down and another minute for a train to pass. Having 5 minute frequencies would mean that in some cases, there's only be like 1 minute of free-flowing traffic before the gates would have to come down again. Personally, it could work if the LRT becomes viable enough that 2-car trains aren't enough (in which case, there would be a disproportionate amount of people using the trains over those driving).


I remember reading a report issued by the City of Waterloo that showed room for something like 3-4 more tracks for the OMSF. Based on that image, it seems pretty fair to assume that there is room for those tracks to exist in the future if needed.
From what I remember of the yard, 3 tracks could go in easy, but will be shorter than the main ones. You should be able to get 7 more cars on those track and a figure I heard during the open house.

Keeping on forgetting there are gates at various crossing and that 5 minute headway could cause 2.5 minutes between trains going opposite direction. Even at 10 minute, could see a train every 5 minutes at crossing unless they are time to past each other at the same time.

If you maintain 8-10 minute headway, it will stay that way until there is a need for a 4th car and ridership gets to peak load. Then it become an issue for the Region to either lengthen the platforms for 4 cars or tell the car folks to deal with the gates coming down a lot more and longer travel time.
 
From what I remember of the yard, 3 tracks could go in easy, but will be shorter than the main ones. You should be able to get 7 more cars on those track and a figure I heard during the open house.

Keeping on forgetting there are gates at various crossing and that 5 minute headway could cause 2.5 minutes between trains going opposite direction. Even at 10 minute, could see a train every 5 minutes at crossing unless they are time to past each other at the same time.

If you maintain 8-10 minute headway, it will stay that way until there is a need for a 4th car and ridership gets to peak load. Then it become an issue for the Region to either lengthen the platforms for 4 cars or tell the car folks to deal with the gates coming down a lot more and longer travel time.
The line's only expected to see 30-40K passengers per day initially, which is already much higher than the existing 200 and 7. What I'm starting to question now is why they didn't build a station at Bearinger, because the entire McCormick neighborhood is not being served by the LRT.
 

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