ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[Elmira Guy]

All Rogers services were down in Elmira and St Jacobs this morning. Someone on the Rogers Outages page said it was due to LRT crews severing fibre optic cables. Asked him where he got that info, no response. Naturally.

[Canard]

Temporary fencing is up on Charles, completely encircling the Cedar/Kitchener Market platform. I wonder if they're going to start kitting out the platform? Why else would they fence it off?

Whole whackload of embedded track just got the tarps pulled off, all the way from Manulife to the existing transit terminal.

[timc]

The used-car parking was the Madison-Cameron block. This will be in the Cedar-Madison block; there was a small office buiding in that spot, up until pre-construction demolition a couple years ago.

Here?

[notmyfriends]

I can't believe how huge the TPSS is; I wonder what people will think when these start showing up downtown. I suspect there will be a lot of "...oh." 's.

The TPSS locations don't put them directly in either of the downtowns. The one closest to Uptown is between Perimeter and Waterloo park, accessed from Fr. David Bauer; then in Kitchener, there's the one that had been set to go behind UW Pharmacy but is now set for Waterloo Street, and the other is next to Charles by Cedar.

The one going in at 904 King St. W is replacing a pretty nice building in a pretty prominent main street location

[KevinL]

The used-car parking was the Madison-Cameron block. This will be in the Cedar-Madison block; there was a small office buiding in that spot, up until pre-construction demolition a couple years ago.

Here?

Yes, that's the one.

[Square]

DUKE ST W BREITHAUPT ST TO VICTORIA ST N ION Construction Work
Start: Mar 15, 2016
Duration: 8 week closure.

This is from City of Kitchener Road Closures. I wonder what work are they going to do here? Rail Alignment?

[GtwoK]

Jesus Christ. The pedestrian detour on top of a pedestrian detour that will cause. They'll have to walk all the way to the end of Breithaupt, down to the Weber street underpass, over to Victoria, and then all the way back to King. A 50 meter distance (from one side of the grade separation to the other) will turn into a 1 kilometre long detour. That's a long way to ask people to walk.

[MidTowner]

No way to get to downtown Kitchener from the west/north between Weber and Park...a kilometre. That's quite the detour.

My wife's reaction (we live in west Mount Hope, and mostly walk): "I guess I'll be walking Uptown rather than Downtown when I need to run errands the next few months."

[Andy]

Pedestrians can still cross at Waterloo fine - despite the signs. Not sure if they will be doing any construction there though.

[tomh009]

No way to get to downtown Kitchener from the west/north between Weber and Park...a kilometre. That's quite the detour.

My wife's reaction (we live in west Mount Hope, and mostly walk): "I guess I'll be walking Uptown rather than Downtown when I need to run errands the next few months."

Pretty much the same for us, except that we are on the other side of the detour.  Fortunately it's getting warmer so with a bicycle there will be more options (Iron Horse Trail to get to Waterloo).

[Canard]

Waterloo has giant Danger/Don't cross here signs there but people just push past the fence anyway.

If it is NOT truly a danger, then it's problematic because it leads to a culture of feeling that it is ok to just ignore signs and do whatever the hell you want. Then someone gets killed by a train or falls down a pit where there really IS a danger, and the project is delayed and opening will get pushed back (which will really annoy me.).

GrandLinq has many times in the past responded rapidly when an issue is brought to their attention. They can't fix a problem if they don't know it's there!

[MidTowner]

Waterloo has giant Danger/Don't cross here signs there but people just push past the fence anyway.

If it is NOT truly a danger, then it's problematic because it leads to a culture of feeling that it is ok to just ignore signs and do whatever the hell you want. Then someone gets killed by a train or falls down a pit where there really IS a danger, and the project is delayed and opening will get pushed back (which will really annoy me.).

I think this is very well-said. If it’s a case that it’s perfectly safe, then people are being inconvenienced for no reason. I know that some people are crossing at Waterloo, but they are not supposed to be and from what I can observe most people are going around to Duke. As far as the City and Region are concerned, Waterloo and King are both closed, and Duke will be, too. I don’t think they are assuming that the detour is only affecting the risk-averse and the law-abiding.

[panamaniac]

Just up the road at KCI, the steps are looking better and better:

I was up that way this afternoon and I see that the concrete of the front wall of the staircase is being covered with a brown/yellow brick that seems a close match to that of the school.  Should look very good!

[Canard]

Are there any renderings of what the final product will be? I wonder if one whole project team is dedicated to just doing this whole stairwork thing.

[Canard]

Trackwork on Caroline:

   

Trackwork between Seagram and University, pre-tamping: