King-Victoria Transit Hub

[Spokes]

I genuinely despise Concept B.

Concept A has grown on me, but I think more so just because I'm coming to grips with the reality of all of this.

As a whole it just feels like it lacks vision.

Vision of?

Grandeur.

Just doing something awesome and seeing what the need is going to be 10, 15, 20 years from now

[Coke6pk]

Personally I hope the region will try to push metrolinc to include a full shed. I just don't have much faith in the metrolinx. If it was a parking garage metrolinx will bust out all the bells and whistles, but I expect bare bones on this.

Perhaps we can convince Metrolinx to build a parking structure over the tracks and platforms.... a win/win?

Coke

[nms]

What does Transport Canada say about taking freight equipment through a covered shed? For the moment, freight traffic will continue to travel past the station for points south and west.

[timio]

Preferred design has been selected.

https://calendar.regionofwaterloo.ca/Cou...c00104a4a3 (Page 95)

(TL;DR: The wooden one that fronted the tracks.)

[LesPio]

As the Comic Book Guy from the Simpson's would say "Worst Project Ever". This project just keeps dragging on.

[kidgibnick]

Pretty disappointed with all the proposals, as well as the preferred design. Would have liked to see them use more vertical space. I know it's just an initial render, but Kitchener continues to disappoint architecturally. A rail station says a lot about a city, it's the first impression commuters get when arriving - it needs to be inviting.
Office space too risky atm? Perhaps they could have considered a small supermarket, especially convenient from commuters (eg. ReweCity, TescoExpress). Most reasonably sized rail-stations in Europe have a supermarket, and although most things in Europe are not open 24/7, the central-station supermarkets often are.
Madrid Atocha has amazing plant features inside the main hallway. What will ours have, a TimHortons to-go? :/

[danbrotherston]

Not only that, but the budget for this project has BALLOONED to 140 million dollars. They're building almost nothing, a terminal building with a square, a ground level bus loop, and an underpass, how can that possibly cost 140 million dollars.

You know, I have this reaction all the time, and yes, I'm not an expert on these types of things, but we are putting up 30 storey skyscrapers in this city, where the retail price of the units in the building are lower than that. It's going to take some serious explaining how it costs more for a ground level building, than it does for a skyscraper.

[tomh009]

The worst project ever? Seriously, folks, won't someone please think of the children!

This is not going to be the end state for the transit hub. This is the first phase, to give us a new station, since the region was unable to attract an acceptable bid for developing the entire centre. The increased costs enable a future developer to extend this building ($5M) and there is $16M for an access road and an underpass.

[tomh009]

Office space too risky atm? Perhaps they could have considered a small supermarket, especially convenient from commuters (eg. ReweCity, TescoExpress). Most reasonably sized rail-stations in Europe have a supermarket, and although most things in Europe are not open 24/7, the central-station supermarkets often are.

Madrid Atocha has amazing plant features inside the main hallway. What will ours have, a TimHortons to-go? :/

The region is not going to run a supermarket, nor should they. And to date, no supermarket chain has yet committed to putting an urban supermarket in DTK, and I don't see why the station would changes things substantially in the near term.

As for Madrid Atocha, they have some 300,000 passengers per day. Do you really think that's comparable to what Kitchener will be?

[danbrotherston]

Office space too risky atm? Perhaps they could have considered a small supermarket, especially convenient from commuters (eg. ReweCity, TescoExpress). Most reasonably sized rail-stations in Europe have a supermarket, and although most things in Europe are not open 24/7, the central-station supermarkets often are.

Madrid Atocha has amazing plant features inside the main hallway. What will ours have, a TimHortons to-go? :/

The region is not going to run a supermarket, nor should they. And to date, no supermarket chain has yet committed to putting an urban supermarket in DTK, and I don't see why the station would changes things substantially in the near term.

As for Madrid Atocha, they have some 300,000 passengers per day. Do you really think that's comparable to what Kitchener will be?

Nor do any (well, not most) of the city governments in Europe, nor for that matter does Cadillac Fairview, that does not mean that these groups are not the landlords for supermarkets, this is not unusual, even here.

As for whether it is comparable, I'm sure it's different but commercial was part of the original plan, a private developer is apparently unwilling (although given that we've jacked up the price, maybe they would be), that doesn't meant that we shouldn't be.

Now, I know you were upset by the "worst project ever" statement, and I completely agree, things like the 401 widening are orders of magnitude worse. But I do think there are legitimate problems with this project as planned right now, not least of which, the utterly massive unjustified cost.

[ac3r]

I'm no longer surprised when I find a project that gets announced to be underwhelming. City planners, developers and architectural offices here are seriously lacking in ambition. We've got one of the best universities in the world here - and one of the best architectural and planning programs - yet none of that seems to stay here in the region itself. Students get a taste of Rome and then have zero desire to stick around in a mid sized Canadian city...

Hopefully they do have interesting long term visions for this project, but I have no real hopes that it'll happen for a very long time.

[kidgibnick]

Office space too risky atm? Perhaps they could have considered a small supermarket, especially convenient from commuters (eg. ReweCity, TescoExpress). Most reasonably sized rail-stations in Europe have a supermarket, and although most things in Europe are not open 24/7, the central-station supermarkets often are.

Madrid Atocha has amazing plant features inside the main hallway. What will ours have, a TimHortons to-go? :/

The region is not going to run a supermarket, nor should they. And to date, no supermarket chain has yet committed to putting an urban supermarket in DTK, and I don't see why the station would changes things substantially in the near term.

As for Madrid Atocha, they have some 300,000 passengers per day. Do you really think that's comparable to what Kitchener will be?

I don't really understand this comment. Most rail stations in Europe are landlords to commercial tenants. Commuters need food, coffee, shopping, and this is (or could be) a high traffic centralized place to provide that (if not now, then in coming years - planning for the future). Perhaps the difference is that most rail stations (at least in Germany, Switzerland) are joint/owned by the rail company (which is often nationalized; Deutsche Bahn, SBB, etc.) - this means it does not fall on the city or municipality to build a rail station, but the rail-company to build infrastructure (bridges, track, stations, etc.) from which they (intend to) profit. If the city is going to build an expensive transit hub, why would they not leverage it to create additional sources of cash-flow, eg. commercial space for a supermarket, or anything else (albeit difficult right now).

You don't need 300k/d passengers to create something interesting (eg. beautiful tree feature in the main hall, like in Madrid). To AC3R's point, we have tremendous talent in this city, but on street level, we could do better
Can we really expect city council members alone to be educated in matters of architecture or urban psychology? (let's leverage our local resource base). My point is that it lacks vision. But....let's see, the plans are likely to change.

[Acitta]

The region is not going to run a supermarket, nor should they. And to date, no supermarket chain has yet committed to putting an urban supermarket in DTK, and I don't see why the station would changes things substantially in the near term.

As for Madrid Atocha, they have some 300,000 passengers per day. Do you really think that's comparable to what Kitchener will be?

I don't really understand this comment. Most rail stations in Europe are landlords to commercial tenants. Commuters need food, coffee, shopping, and this is (or could be) a high traffic centralized place to provide that (if not now, then in coming year - planning for the future). Perhaps the difference is that most rail stations (at least in Germany, Switzerland) are joint/owned by the rail company (which is often nationalized; Deutsche Bahn, SBB, etc.) - this means it does not fall on the city or municipality to build a rail station, but the rail-company to build a network from which they (intend to) profit. If the city is going to build an expensive transit hub, why would they not leverage it to create additional sources of cash-flow, eg. commercial space for a supermarket, or anything else (albeit difficult right now).

You don't need 300k/d passengers to create something interesting (eg. beautiful tree feature in the main hall, like in Madrid). To AC3R's point, we have tremendous talent in this city, but on street level, we could do better
Can we really expect city council members alone to be educated in matters of architecture or urban psychology? (let's leverage our local resource base). My point is that it lacks vision. But....let's see, the plans are likely to change.

Europe also has an efficient, modern, high speed commuter and intercity rail system, while Canada has a passenger rail system that is no faster than it was in the 19th century.

[tomh009]

I don't really understand this comment. Most rail stations in Europe are landlords to commercial tenants. Commuters need food, coffee, shopping, and this is (or could be) a high traffic centralized place to provide that (if not now, then in coming years - planning for the future). Perhaps the difference is that most rail stations (at least in Germany, Switzerland) are joint/owned by the rail company (which is often nationalized; Deutsche Bahn, SBB, etc.) - this means it does not fall on the city or municipality to build a rail station, but the rail-company to build infrastructure (bridges, track, stations, etc.) from which they (intend to) profit. If the city is going to build an expensive transit hub, why would they not leverage it to create additional sources of cash-flow, eg. commercial space for a supermarket, or anything else (albeit difficult right now).

You don't need 300k/d passengers to create something interesting (eg. beautiful tree feature in the main hall, like in Madrid). To AC3R's point, we have tremendous talent in this city, but on street level, we could do better
Can we really expect city council members alone to be educated in matters of architecture or urban psychology? (let's leverage our local resource base). My point is that it lacks vision. But....let's see, the plans are likely to change.

Take a look at any of these European stations, and look at the number of tracks, destinations, departures and passengers, and it will be clear that it's a whole order of magnitude (or two) different than Kitchener. Apart from ownership (GO or VIA is not going to start building stations) there simply will not be enough passengers for the foreseeable future to turn it into a commercial hub. And the region doesn't want to be a commercial landlord anyway.

Personally, I find the selected design to be attractive and interesting. Modest, but attractive. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

[ijmorlan]

And the region doesn't want to be a commercial landlord anyway.

Why? It’s weird to own the most valuable real estate in the Region and not want to maximize returns.

I mean, the organizational details might be done any of a number of ways, including hiring a management company or leasing everything except the train station part to a company which would deal with individual tenants, but based on the way we’re going, this may soon be the lowest density property in the area.