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ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit
(02-18-2018, 03:58 PM)ijmorlan Wrote:
(02-18-2018, 01:31 PM)Canard Wrote: ijmorlan, it is no different than pulling into a parking space on a street, getting out and walking to the meter to put your coins in.

Good analogy. I hadn’t thought of the analogy, but that’s the kind of thing I was getting at, and the way I think GO platforms work too. Except for the R&T park and part of the sidewalk aspect — those areas aren’t just platforms, they are also paths/sidewalks, completely independent of their function as platforms. It’s not obvious to me what a parking analogy to that would be — some space that was both a parking space and a turn lane? But that doesn’t work as a concept.

Pulling into a parking space to make a three-point turn?  Same as with a sidewalk, you are essentially staying mobile and not staying in the space.
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(02-18-2018, 04:02 PM)tomh009 Wrote:
(02-18-2018, 03:58 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: Good analogy. I hadn’t thought of the analogy, but that’s the kind of thing I was getting at, and the way I think GO platforms work too. Except for the R&T park and part of the sidewalk aspect — those areas aren’t just platforms, they are also paths/sidewalks, completely independent of their function as platforms. It’s not obvious to me what a parking analogy to that would be — some space that was both a parking space and a turn lane? But that doesn’t work as a concept.

Pulling into a parking space to make a three-point turn?  Same as with a sidewalk, you are essentially staying mobile and not staying in the space.

The simplest analogy is simply a vehicle lane that also permits parking.
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(02-17-2018, 10:54 PM)Pheidippides Wrote:
(02-17-2018, 05:04 PM)KevinL Wrote: Every station has at least one way in that ticks all those boxes - nothing there indicates there must always be more than one. (Particularly, neither Mill nor Northfield seem capable of more than one.)

The approaches we're talking about seem to be Grandlinq's acknowledgement that people will want to get to stations like Frederick, Kitchener Market, and Borden from the non-primary direction and give another method of access. It just seems to be built strangely given tactile strips on the station side of the crossings but nothing on the curb side.

After doing a bit more reading I now think the the approaches we are talking about, either by design or in error, are probably considered emergency exits:
(viii) Provide clear emergency exiting from platforms.
(xi) Exits shall provide safe exiting from trains and platforms under normal operational and emergency conditions. Platforms and exits shall allow passengers to completely clear the platform prior to the arrival of the next train. 

Fair enough, but they're not really marked like emergency exits - they're just exits...

[Image: 2oon.jpg]
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You can tell we're getting close by all the minutiae we're endlessly debating Smile
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(02-18-2018, 07:34 PM)KevinL Wrote: Fair enough, but they're not really marked like emergency exits - they're just exits...

[Image: 2oon.jpg]

Thanks for the photo. I had no idea it was actually clearly signed as an exit. Simple practical solution for riders is just to walk along the tracks up to the intersection with Duke St. Shock! Horror! I know, but:

If you’re walking to the stop, you’re facing the LRT traffic and can either see that you’ve just missed it: Wait at the intersection, then proceed down the tracks once it’s gone. Or you don’t see the vehicle: it will stop at the station, so just walk along the tracks to the station and onto the platform.

If you’re walking from the stop, you’ve just gotten off and you can just follow behind the vehicle up to the traffic light. There isn’t another one coming for several minutes.

Of course the real solution is for the block to have been designed slightly differently so that the platform extends into a walkway between the tracks and roadway up to the Duke St. intersection. Tying into another topic of discussion here, such a design probably would have been much easier if the road had been rebuilt with one through lane in each direction, plus appropriate turn lanes. Those two southbound lanes don’t both need to be there and they are taking up space that could allow for the tracks to be further over in order to leave space for said walkway.
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(02-18-2018, 08:37 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: Simple practical solution for riders is just to walk along the tracks up to the intersection with Duke St.

OMG, you just killed Canard.

Yes, that is what the design in encouraging, but in no way should it be allowed as it is; it is basically breeding bad habits.

And you can't always assume the train will move south on one track and north on the other. That's like only looking one direction when crossing a one-way street; the one time you don't bother checking the other direction is the day you get smucked.
Everyone move to the back of the bus and we all get home faster.
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(02-18-2018, 09:58 PM)Pheidippides Wrote:
(02-18-2018, 08:37 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: Simple practical solution for riders is just to walk along the tracks up to the intersection with Duke St.

OMG, you just killed Canard.

Yes, that is what the design in encouraging, but in no way should it be allowed as it is; it is basically breeding bad habits.

And you can't always assume the train will move south on one track and north on the other. That's like only looking one direction when crossing a one-way street; the one time you don't bother checking the other direction is the day you get smucked.

Heh, well, the breading of bad habits it the fault of the designers.

That being said, the one (and there is only one) redeeming factor of the two southbound lanes is that I envision one day (and it *should* be soon, but probably isn't) a two way cyclepath all the way from Courtland to Lancaster, on the south side.  There is no good reason not to do so.

That being said, there was probably plenty of property to build a path, just look at the positioning of the utility boxes and the cat pole.  A path along the tracks would have fit.
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(02-18-2018, 01:23 PM)KevinL Wrote:
(02-18-2018, 12:14 PM)Pheidippides Wrote: In this set-up though, as someone new to the system, how does one look at a route map to see if the system will actually take me where I want to go, or when the next train is coming, or even buy a ticket without trespassing in to the paid fare zone?

As noted above, fare inspectors are human. If your purpose on the platform is to absorb this information, that will likely be clear and easily explained to them, and if they're not otherwise busy I imagine an inspector would be happy to help with a concern. They're not constant enforcement gatekeepers, they have a broader customer service and education role as well.
I believe this makes it easy to ensure that these platforms  are "no camping zones" for people seeking permanent shelter.
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I don’t think I’d ever noticed that directions were actually signposted at the East end of the Frederick platform! That’s crazy! And, as Dan points out, it’s a bad design just inviting people to misbehave...

Urban sections of tramways and light rail get a bit fuzzy sometimes when it comes to where you’re allowed to walk and where you’re not.

So, assuming on Tuesday they pop down to Fairway again and finish off clearance testing that one section of the NB track between Fairway and Mill they missed, and the Northfield curve gets unveiled soon so they can do their powered testing up there, what does everyone think will happen next? A slow ramp-up of speeds for a single LRV? A pair of LRV’s out at once, either separate or coupled? Enabling of traffic and railway signals so the police procession isn’t required? Burn-in of a single LRV so Bombardier can be allowed to start shipping the remaining 11 vehicles?
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(02-19-2018, 08:02 AM)Canard Wrote: I don’t think I’d ever noticed that directions were actually signposted at the East end of the Frederick platform! That’s crazy! And, as Dan points out, it’s a bad design just inviting people to misbehave...

Urban sections of tramways and light rail get a bit fuzzy sometimes when it comes to where you’re allowed to walk and where you’re not.

I find it interesting that you think of it as bad signage encouraging people to misbehave. Why not think of it as bad design (of the curbs and pavement markings) making it inconvenient to use the authorized and signed routes? (also making it unclear where the authorized route actually is) The problem here (unlike at the north end of the Willis Way platform, but similar to the north end of the GRH platform) is that the design is self-contradictory, and therefore definitely wrong, regardless of what one thinks about where platform accesses should be.
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(02-18-2018, 09:58 PM)Pheidippides Wrote:
(02-18-2018, 08:37 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: Simple practical solution for riders is just to walk along the tracks up to the intersection with Duke St.

OMG, you just killed Canard.

Yes, that is what the design in encouraging, but in no way should it be allowed as it is; it is basically breeding bad habits.

And you can't always assume the train will move south on one track and north on the other. That's like only looking one direction when crossing a one-way street; the one time you don't bother checking the other direction is the day you get smucked.

Good point. I’ll be interested to see how often they actually run backwards. The system isn’t really set up with crossovers for convenient reverse operation: to get from the normal-running track to the reverse-running track you need to back through a crossover and then continue forward (except along the Waterloo Spur where a facing-points crossover is present just south of Northfield). In San Diego, where they sometimes (at least once, when I was there!) use only a single track to bypass track work, they have crossovers in both directions. Even on the TTC where I understand the signal system doesn’t allow single-track operation almost all of their crossovers are double crossovers.
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Trailing-point half-crossovers like ours are inherently safer - a mis-thrown switch doesn't have the possibility of leading to a head-on collision between vehicles, like leading-point half-crossovers do.

There's no need to have full-full crossovers, either, unless you want to reverse-run for a short section of a route due to platform or track maintenance in a short section and have a pinch (not an issue when your headways are as big as ours, but that's another discussion...). Our system was never designed with that capability in mind (otherwise there would be full crossovers at much more frequent intervals).

The trailing-point setup we have will be just fine for ion. Simple, cheap, and effective - the motto of the entire system, really, and an excellent model for others to follow.
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1/1 - Thursday, February 15, 2018

   
Approaching King/Frederick.

   
Trains really do the limbo under the overpass here.  Note how compressed the pantograph is!

   
Speaking of pantographs...

   
Making a list, checking it twice...

   
Back up through Waterloo.
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1/1 - Friday, February 16, 2018

   
History is made:  Crews on Friday made it all the way to Fairway!

   
Heading back North on the SB alignment.  Some rail equipment was parked on the NB tracks at Overland, so they proceeded to the crossover at Mill, before switching back to the NB tracks.

   
Flying along (not really, but it's fun to pretend!) on Courtland.

   
Can't get enough of that nose profile. I love these vehicles so much!

   
Approaching Block Line.
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Great photos (as usual) Canard!

I came across a section of the project agreement this weekend that I had not read before. It deals with performance measures GrandLinq has to submit to the region that affects how much they get paid.

For example, for a train to be considered to have departed on time it has to leave between 15sec earlier or 60sec late of the scheduled departure time, and for a train to be considered arriving to arrive it has to arrive within 60sec early and no more than 180sec late of the scheduled arrival time (train trip cancelled is also earns 0 points - just wouldn't fit in the screen capture).
       

It also says that after the simulated service work during testing, "Project Co shall provide an augmented Baseline Service Plan which includes the arrival times for each LRT Stop along the Route." and that the, "Plan will include a general layover time of 4 minutes and not less than 3 minutes,"

There are all kinds of detailed calculations for various metrics (KPIs) with complicated names like:
Monthly Operations Performance Factor (MOPF) 
Scheduled Service Performance Factor (SSPF)
Completed LRT Trips Performance Factor (CLTPF) 
Daily Scheduled Service Performance Factor (DSSPF)
Monthly Maintenance Performance Factor (MMPF)
Fleet Functionality Performance Factor (FFPF)
Maintenance and Inspection Performance Factor (MIPF) 

And complicated formulas like:
   


The document I referenced in the winter walking thread also defines, among other things, non-compliant track geometry and spells out the fines for non-compliance for track geometry ($20,000 per non-compliance event).
Everyone move to the back of the bus and we all get home faster.
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