ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[danbrotherston]

These drivers who pass a moving train and then turn in front of it.  I don't understand it.

Wow that video is egregious. That driver's license should honestly be suspended forever.

If you took away peoples licenses for that, you'd be taking away about 10-20% of drivers licenses. Most drivers don't pay attention when turning, most drivers don't plan ahead, and plenty of drivers run red lights. The only reason this doesn't happen more often is because most often those factors don't align together in front of a train...much more often they align on top of a pedestrian, but even then it's rare. Most often, it's just another car.

I had a friend who was moving to Toronto for a co-op, and I remember telling him he'd have to check the traffic report to know where the crashes are. He said "surely you mean if there are crashes" and I was like, nah, there are many every day, you just have to hope they aren't in your way.

People are completely numb and blind to the absolute carnage on the roads. All drivers are bad some of the time, even me, and I am absolutely militant about being careful and following the rules. It's dumb luck there aren't more crashes, and its this very dumb luck that convinces people they can drive this badly and not suffer any consequences.

So yeah, unfortunately, this is hardly unusually bad driving.

[danbrotherston]

Leaving that aside, what they really should have done is closed the intersections to cars.

If there is actually a real silver bullet that the Dutch use to make their roads better, it's that they're willing to close intersections. Yeah, you have to drive a little farther (which makes walking and biking more attractive) but since the road grid is less complicated there's less infrastructure, fewer intersections, and safer roads as a result.

The only allowed left turn movement there is from Agnes to King. Realistically this movement can be moved to Wellington.

If emergency vehicles still need access they can add flex bollards.

There's no reason there should be any traffic signal there, there should be no intersection at all, not even right-in-right-out. Nor should there have been at Moore. And don't even get me started on the section past GRH, at least 3 should have never been built.

Leaving aside that would have saved 5 million dollars at least in construction costs (a fully signalised intersection will easily run 1 million, I say remove 5), it would also have saved a dozen or more collisions already (admittedly some might just have collided at different intersections), and would have made safer, faster roads for everyone in the region.

This restriction would have been a huge net positive, at the cost of a relatively minor inconvenience for a few.

But unfortunately our traffic engineers and politicians are both spineless and cannot say no, so instead of following the actual standards that traffic engineers have (because even the pathetically bad traffic engineering standards that North American engineers follow explicitly prohibit all 5 of the intersections I call out), they cave to the slightest driver pressure, in a way they never cave to any other transportation constituency.

[MidTowner]

The only allowed left turn movement there is from Agnes to King. Realistically this movement can be moved to Wellington.

If emergency vehicles still need access they can add flex bollards.

There's no reason there should be any traffic signal there, there should be no intersection at all, not even right-in-right-out. Nor should there have been at Moore. And don't even get me started on the section past GRH, at least 3 should have never been built.

Leaving aside that would have saved 5 million dollars at least in construction costs (a fully signalised intersection will easily run 1 million, I say remove 5), it would also have saved a dozen or more collisions already (admittedly some might just have collided at different intersections), and would have made safer, faster roads for everyone in the region.

This restriction would have been a huge net positive, at the cost of a relatively minor inconvenience for a few.

But unfortunately our traffic engineers and politicians are both spineless and cannot say no, so instead of following the actual standards that traffic engineers have (because even the pathetically bad traffic engineering standards that North American engineers follow explicitly prohibit all 5 of the intersections I call out), they cave to the slightest driver pressure, in a way they never cave to any other transportation constituency.

Absolutely. It's ridiculous how dense the signalised intersections are on King Street through Midtown. Why do Green and Mount Hope Streets (that dead-end at King) both have signals when there is a signalized intersection at Pine Street, less than 200 meters away from each? 

You're right about Moore, too- eliminating the signal there would have inconvenienced practically no one, but made things a lot more pleasant and safer for people on foot.

[ijmorlan]

The only allowed left turn movement there is from Agnes to King. Realistically this movement can be moved to Wellington.

If emergency vehicles still need access they can add flex bollards.

There's no reason there should be any traffic signal there, there should be no intersection at all, not even right-in-right-out. Nor should there have been at Moore. And don't even get me started on the section past GRH, at least 3 should have never been built.

I think there should at least be a pedestrian crossing. I agree the intersection, for motor vehicles, isn’t really needed. But even with the allowed movements as they are the intersection is not designed to discourage the forbidden movements anywhere near as much as possible. So it’s really badly designed on multiple levels: allowed more movements than necessary, then didn’t design the intersection to exclude the other movements properly.

It would be pretty hilarious if part of the traffic “engineers” response to your suggestion was that it would be too far between pedestrian crossings, given what was built down near Traynor Ave.

[danbrotherston]

There's no reason there should be any traffic signal there, there should be no intersection at all, not even right-in-right-out. Nor should there have been at Moore. And don't even get me started on the section past GRH, at least 3 should have never been built.

I think there should at least be a pedestrian crossing. I agree the intersection, for motor vehicles, isn’t really needed. But even with the allowed movements as they are the intersection is not designed to discourage the forbidden movements anywhere near as much as possible. So it’s really badly designed on multiple levels: allowed more movements than necessary, then didn’t design the intersection to exclude the other movements properly.

It would be pretty hilarious if part of the traffic “engineers” response to your suggestion was that it would be too far between pedestrian crossings, given what was built down near Traynor Ave.

Yeah, indeed. I haven’t said anything about pedestrian crossings. The traffic engineers probably would use them as justification, which is ironic given that the existence of the traffic signal almost certainly makes it less safe for peds to cross then a proper staged ped crossing alone would be. The LRT and BRT in Utrecht has them everywhere.