ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[Lens]

Catenary supports are poured along the hydro corridor, work has definitely picked up quickly in that area.

[eizenstriet]

Walking through Uptown today and seeing how the old infrastructure is so imbedded and nearby the corduroy road it makes you wonder how other road work has missed finding it over the course of the many rebuilds of King St over the years.

Last week when I walked by the guardians who were carefully exposing the corduroy road, I saw some conduit (not fresh, but modern era) running through the subsoil across the road right on top of the logs in a couple of places. I commented that the existence of the corduroy road wouldn't have been a surprise to everyone, to which the workers replied with a smile "It seems not."

[Markster]

Who wants to deal with the paperwork and delays? Just run your conduit, quickly fill it back in, and job's done!

[jordan2423]

That’s the primary benefit, really: lower maintenance costs for the utility because of less frequent damage and outages.

yes. In my neighbourhood we've had like 3 power outages - 2 of which have lasted several hours in the past couple months.
Ridiculous.

[tomh009]

So the Region's community services committee has approved $385,000 for seven art installations at ION stations.  That's $385,000 for all seven, not $385,000 each.  One wonders why they even bother.  I fear the eventual winning installations will either junk up the stations or be too insignificant to be noticed.  Sigh of disappointment.  

http://www.therecord.com/news-story/6482...n-funding/

I think I'm missing something. $50,000+ seems like enough for a nice mural or sculpture. How much should "art installations" cost without being "junk"?

I would have had the opposite reaction had it been $385,000 EACH. How can you spend a third of a million dollars on a piece of art that fits inside a street car station?

I agree, $50K should be fine for a non-trivial sculpture.  As a data point, Ted Fullerton's multi-piece work at the Charles & Benton garage was budgeted at $150K, and it's much bigger than the ION stations have space for.

[SammyOES]

Count me in the "would be very upset if we spent over 2.5 million on artwork" camp. I could see going a bit higher than $385,000 but not by much.

[KevinL]

Lots of work in the Charles/Benton area today. Benton has been closed down to King for utility work, signs say for 10 days. On Charles itself, pours have begun on the northbound embedded track.

[panamaniac]

Benton and Queen with closures at the same time? That's going to make for a messy afternoon for traffic.

[plam]

Depends on your expectations for art. A lot of projects in the US used to follow a "one percent for art" policy. That would be a lot more than $350k for ION.

[panamaniac]

Depends on your expectations for art. A lot of projects in the US used to follow a "one percent for art" policy. That would be a lot more than $350k for ION.

I wondered about that  - doesn't the Region have a policy of this sort?  I note that the money approved for the seven stations is not the entire public art budget for the project.

[Canard]

The Charles/Benton piece I think is fantastic - that's a good example, thanks for that.

I'm really glad that they're considering artwork at some stations, but I too worry that the current budget may not be enough. But who knows - best to pitch it to the artists and see what they can come up with. Art is one of those very subjective things, and I hope whatever they decide on is something that can be respected and enjoyed by all.

[insider]

Nobody has mentioned the two negative articles on the record today... and their comment sections.

[SammyOES]

Having a rule to spend 1% of the total ION budget on art seems crazy to me. But then I hate blanket rules like this.

I wouldn't even necessarily have a problem with 1% of the budget going to art. If there are enough good places to put it - by all means spend the money. But 50k/station seems really reasonable to me and I'd hate to spend more just because we have to get to some number.

[MidTowner]

Why does the Record article refer to Ion as a “$1.9-billion project”?

[panamaniac]

Why does the Record article refer to Ion as a “$1.9-billion project”?

That's to build it and run it for 30 years, is it not?