ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[tomh009]

It's not announced, but Stirling and Eby are both passable if you need to cross Charles.

As are Ontario and Gaukel, though they may not be as useful.

Definitely not as useful.  Benton will be far better when it reopens.

[Canard]

Stirling certainly wasn't yesterday or the day before - there's a giant pit there! One of my photos on the previous page shows this.

[JCnb]

Minor update! Construction is in full swing on Northfeild & King as many know, the work has recently extended all the way down to the existing rail crossing and this afternoon a crane was dismantling the existing overhead crossing lights on the south side of the street.

[Canard]

Also work is progressing at the Connestoga Mall station site, and on King between the future station and Northfield. I was quite surprised to see the road already all torn up on the one side earlier this week!

[JCnb]

A somewhat related post but google earth imagery has been updated to August 8th 2015 which shows progress on the entire ION route from Fairview Park mall to just shy of the maintenance building.

**Edit: This also included many areas of street view.**

[GtwoK]

There's a thread about the updated imagery in the Off Topic forum 

Of note, the region has also submitted their building records (there's gotta be an official name for this) to Google, and as a result, all buildings and structures in the region now show up in map view of Google Maps.

[belmont]

Stirling certainly wasn't yesterday or the day before - there's a giant pit there! One of my photos on the previous page shows this.

You are correct. They dug it up again. What's open and not is quite literally changing every day.

[GtwoK]

Stirling was supposed to reopen yesterday, didn't today, but my bets are on it being open by the end of tomorrow. Why would the intersection be constantly re-dug up as they are? That is to say, what is stopping them from a single extended closure and doing all the necessary work then rather than multiple sporadic closures?

[GtwoK]

Stirling is now closed until October 4th to accommodate "final underground utility work". Possibly curbs after that? I'm just excited because I travel down that section of Charles frequently, and I really want to see it open again.

Also the Shelley / Courtland closure is for 12 weeks! That's the longest closure we've seen yet, isn't it? Benton / Charles is only 10.

[Canard]

Argh, figured I'd miss all the excitement again by being out of town! I just saw on Twitter that the first rails are now in place on Borden. I was told this would be ballasted track but it is obviously embedded track from the photos. They use the green bars as temporary spanners to hold the rail gauge and then pour concrete around it.

[Markster]

Link, man, link!

[Waterlooer]

Link, man, link!

I found this on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HAL8950/status/647786424666824704

[GtwoK]

I was going to say, it definitely looked like the easement fro Mill had been worked on within the past week. At least from the view I had from Mill when driving past just now.

There's been a lot of grading work done at the Mill station too. Being so Ottawa will be closed here next week, we might see the track crossings done here soon too. Was there ever any final word on how the intersection was going to be changed? I knew there were plans to limit turns / reflow the traffic somehow, don't know what the final decision was though.

Lots of grading has also been started at the Block Line station. What are they doing about the gigantic hill there? Will there be a retaining wall to hold the station in (Would be huge!), or are they just loading on dirt to buff out the hill more?

[Pheidippides]

Was there ever any final word on how the [mill] intersection was going to be changed?

Mill Street and Ottawa Street are recommended (Attachment B):
Close the north leg of Mill Street that is currently signalized.
Implement a traffic control signal at the existing stop controlled intersection of
Ottawa Street and the diverting link of Mill Street (west of the rail lines).
Convert the south leg of Mill Street to right-in and right-out only for northbound
movements.

[Pheidippides]

A little daydreaming fun with my son's cardboard Ion. Really hard to get the perspective and focus right.

If you squint really hard you can almost see the trains running down the tracks.