ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[tomh009]

Requirements can be (and often are) a lot of work, and it's very tempting to take shortcuts. But you'll end up having to pay the piper later if you skip. Catching problems at the requirements stage is the least expensive option, doing it after release is the most expensive.

[danbrotherston]

Requirements can be (and often are) a lot of work, and it's very tempting to take shortcuts. But you'll end up having to pay the piper later if you skip. Catching problems at the requirements stage is the least expensive option, doing it after release is the most expensive.

I agree entirely, just pointing out that even the most specific and precise requirements can still lead to bad outcomes. The process for developing requirements is just as important as having precise requirements.

[tomh009]

Yes. But doing it properly takes more work, so people tend to either skip it or just slap-dash things together.

[plam]

Requirements can be (and often are) a lot of work, and it's very tempting to take shortcuts. But you'll end up having to pay the piper later if you skip. Catching problems at the requirements stage is the least expensive option, doing it after release is the most expensive.

My students really hate the software requirements course while they're taking it. (Co-op jobs don't expose them to the need for requirements). A couple of years later some of them admit that it was actually useful.

[danbrotherston]

Does anyone have any insight into why the PARTs plans for Fairway Mall and Block Line Station haven't been done?

Block line provides huge opportunity, while Fairway Rd. is most in need of improvement. A plan would go a long way to givnig leverage into guiding/informing/forcing council and engineers to actually make improvements in the areas.

[danbrotherston]

Looks like ION will be running with a higher frequency for one day only:

https://www.facebook.com/GRTROW/posts/2824106047687547

I wonder what they are testing. Automatic train control or whatever they call it here.

[ijmorlan]

In recent weeks I’ve noticed a lot of Out of Service Ion vehicles. In at least one case there were two vehicles with the second one following maybe only a couple of minutes behind the preceding one (I don’t remember which was in service). I wonder if this is related?

[Bob_McBob]

Looks like ION will be running with a higher frequency for one day only:

https://www.facebook.com/GRTROW/posts/2824106047687547

I wonder what they are testing. Automatic train control or whatever they call it here.

On Transsee the schedule was really screwy today. GRT alerts says multiple trips were cut short due to "a train issue", and there was a lot of short headway activity in DTK this afternoon.

[Bob_McBob]

Interesting article about affordable housing along the ION route.

https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-...-says.html

[dtkvictim]

Am I correct in assuming that "building affordable housing" in this context means "subsidized housing"? It seems to me that requiring subsidized housing on a large scale in order to provide good transit to lower incomes shouldn't be looked at as a desirable thing, and signifies failures on multiple fronts (requiring large scale subsidized housing and failing to provide good transit outside of a single, easily gentrified corridor). Personally I think that the city's only responsibility when it comes to affordability should be land use decisions that encourage appropriate amounts of development.

Just some questions as I'm a bit ignorant on the topic:

Are there cities around the world that manage mix income neighbourhoods without subsidizing the lower incomes?
How can purpose build subsidized housing not turn into "ghettos"?
I've come across the argument that highrise development can not be affordable, as the price per square foot after a certain height begins rising again. Of course, higher property values raise the base cost of development, meaning higher buildings can be built. Are the larger buildings being built around the Ion corridor beyond that height/cost equilibrium?

As a side note, calling subsidized housing "affordable housing" seems very dishonest to me.

[plam]

Are there cities around the world that manage mix income neighbourhoods without subsidizing the lower incomes?
How can purpose build subsidized housing not turn into "ghettos"?
I've come across the argument that highrise development can not be affordable, as the price per square foot after a certain height begins rising again. Of course, higher property values raise the base cost of development, meaning higher buildings can be built. Are the larger buildings being built around the Ion corridor beyond that height/cost equilibrium?

There's always some notion of subsidy. To me the question is who pays the subsidy. In some places the developer pays the subsidy basically as part of the cost of doing business: to get permission to build X market-rate units they also have to include in their plans Y affordable (subsidized if you want) units (or build them elsewhere or pay into a fund). These are sometimes in the same buildings, which is probably good for avoiding ghettos. And sometimes it's by lottery to get in.

Apparently this is called inclusionary development: https://www.wbur.org/radioboston/2019/02...affordable

[danbrotherston]

A report of a youth cyclist injured (and fortunately not too seriously or fatally, as would be entirely possible in this situation) as a result of the incompetent engineering of the LRT tracks at Moore and King:

https://www.reddit.com/r/kitchener/comme..._accident/

It makes me sad, how can we not hold these engineers responsible for the harm they create. Why does our council not care.

[creative]

Out of curiosity, how should have this been designed? I’m not a civil engineer or have any experience designing LRT systems so I’m just asking!

[danbrotherston]

Out of curiosity, how should have this been designed? I’m not a civil engineer or have any experience designing LRT systems so I’m just asking!

I am not a civil engineer either, but I know of a number different options.

One would be to use a product to fill in the flangeway, there are a few rubber products, which will be depressed by the weight of the LRV, but which fill the flangeway so that a bicycle wheel cannot get stuck in it.

Another would be to design cycling into the roadway. This was already considered in the original design the region tendered, where cyclists are supposed to divert onto a MUT along King St. from Moore to Victoria. This probably would have worked okay, but the engineers in charge of detailed design and implementation were utterly incompetent, the sidewalk is too narrow to be a MUT, there is no signage, the entrance is blocked by a pole, there is no affordance to suggest to any cyclist that they should be using it. As a result the design does not function for cyclists, and there have been a number of injuries reported.

Honestly, I'm not an engineer, this is a hobby for me at best, so I shouldn't be better at it than our regional engineers and regional contractors. And I'm not saying I know all the implications of changes that these design changes would incur, but what is clear is that designing this to be safe for cyclists was not a priority.

[dtkvictim]

Out of curiosity, how should have this been designed? I’m not a civil engineer or have any experience designing LRT systems so I’m just asking!

Just taking wild guesses here (I'm sure engineers should know of better solutions), but either don't have the tracks switch from the side to the center (which basically requires crossing the tracks a small angle), or have dedicated cycling lanes or a MUT outside of the tracks, and never have them cross?

On the Weber street underpass the sidewalk (perhaps just on the south side?) is marked as a shared pathway, so something similar could have been done here. However, I still think that's a really poor solution. On Weber the shared pathway is only for 2 blocks, meaning you have to merge back on to the road. You also get yelled at by both pedestrians and cars for whichever option you choose to take...