ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[danbrotherston]

I.e. Airboss will not permit a new roadway beside it's high security facility.

Well that's strange.

[panamaniac]

I.e. Airboss will not permit a new roadway beside it's high security facility.

Well that's strange.

edit

[tomh009]

The Rockway PARTS is out (page 45)

A slight modification to the midtown PARTS to appease AirBoss (page 3).

Links aren’t working, although I strongly suspect the reason is that Kitchener has grossly incompetent web staff (at some level; don’t go telling off any specific person on my say-so!) rather than that there is anything wrong with your post. 

The Kitchener web site is managed by eSolutions Group rather than the city's internal IT staff.  I do agree with you on a poor choice of implementation technology though.

[Markster]

Links aren’t working, although I strongly suspect the reason is that Kitchener has grossly incompetent web staff (at some level; don’t go telling off any specific person on my say-so!) rather than that there is anything wrong with your post. 

The Kitchener web site is managed by eSolutions Group rather than the city's internal IT staff.  I do agree with you on a poor choice of implementation technology though.

Yeah, the blame lies solely on the chain of responsibility that somehow allowed eSolutions group to get the contract.

[robdrimmie]

eSolutions appears to have very strong relationships with Kitchener and Waterloo (probably Cambridge and the townships too, but I interact with their digital properties much less), the Region, GRT, all the places we love with mediocre at best web sites and apps. On the way hand, building such things is hard but this current update to the City of Kitchener site with it's terrible broken links dropping users to a search powered by Google that references all the broken links is so deeply frustrating. I'm very hopeful that the innovation lab that is just starting to get up and running somehow has a positive impact on such things, but their mandate appears to be more about infrastructure than citizen interaction.

[tomh009]

The Kitchener web site is managed by eSolutions Group rather than the city's internal IT staff.  I do agree with you on a poor choice of implementation technology though.

Yeah, the blame lies solely on the chain of responsibility that somehow allowed eSolutions group to get the contract.

It really depends on how they set the requirements. It may be that eSG's technology allowed them to do a fantastic job on the things that the city prioritized the highest, whereas broken links (and ability to link to pages within the site) were probably not high on the requirements list.

This kind of stuff happens all the time, and not only at governments. Set your requirements wrong, and you just might regret asking for them.

We are pretty far off the topic of LRT, though, so this is my last post on this topic -- at least in this thread. If a mod (Mark?) would like to create a new thread for this and move the posts, that might work the best.

[Coke6pk]

I.e. Airboss will not permit a new roadway beside it's high security facility.

Well that's strange.

Not sure if this was meant seriously, or used as a play on words.... I took it as the latter, and laughed out loud.

   

Coke

[ijmorlan]

Links aren’t working, although I strongly suspect the reason is that Kitchener has grossly incompetent web staff (at some level; don’t go telling off any specific person on my say-so!) rather than that there is anything wrong with your post. I thought I saw another comment about how searching doesn’t work properly and the PDFs have to be “generated” in order to see more than a preview. This is the thing that most irritates me about my profession: the backtalk us competent people get when we tell people how things should be done. I’m pretty sure civil engineers don’t get random incompetents telling them their proposed girder size on a new bridge is wrong. Whereas in my profession, I’m as likely as not to find that somebody I need to work with is ignorant of basic principles of whatever it is we are doing.

What is your profession ?

Web development. <cymbal crash>

So actually this is close to home (or rather, close to work) for me — many people who create Web properties clearly have no understanding of how URLs and HTTP status codes are meant to work.

Whereas very few bridge designers are unaware of the basic principles of how beams and other structural members are meant to work.

[ijmorlan]

Links aren’t working, although I strongly suspect the reason is that Kitchener has grossly incompetent web staff (at some level; don’t go telling off any specific person on my say-so!) rather than that there is anything wrong with your post. 

The Kitchener web site is managed by eSolutions Group rather than the city's internal IT staff.  I do agree with you on a poor choice of implementation technology though.

So that means is that the people I’m talking about are not actually Kitchener employees. My “at some level” is meant to be very general and allow me to say “not you” to anybody whose fault it isn’t.

[ijmorlan]

Yeah, the blame lies solely on the chain of responsibility that somehow allowed eSolutions group to get the contract.

It really depends on how they set the requirements. It may be that eSG's technology allowed them to do a fantastic job on the things that the city prioritized the highest, whereas broken links (and ability to link to pages within the site) were probably not high on the requirements list.

This kind of stuff happens all the time, and not only at governments. Set your requirements wrong, and you just might regret asking for them.

We are pretty far off the topic of LRT, though, so this is my last post on this topic -- at least in this thread. If a mod (Mark?) would like to create a new thread for this and move the posts, that might work the best.

Providing shareable links is basic to the profession. Excusing on the basis of “it wasn’t in the contract” is a bit like excusing a collapsed bridge on the grounds that the contract didn’t explicitly say that the bridge shouldn’t fall down. This is about competence and knowledge of the domain of supposed expertise.

To segue back to LRT and a much larger contract specification process, will we ever have a society in which it goes without saying that a road design has to include appropriate bicycle facilities?

[Canard]

I know the plan is to just run a couple of LRV's all night, but I secretly really hope after a winter or two they'll just buy one of these:

[Pheidippides]

Ben Spurr just tweeted the Bombardier is having another media day NEXT MONTH where Ion #3 will be available to ride on.

Sorry, don't know how to embed tweets:
"Media will be able to see Pilot Car#1 of the Eglinton Crosstown operating
at full speed and experience the operational functionality of the LRV with
a ride aboard the Region of Waterloo’s IONrt Car #3." Lunch will be served.



Guess we aren't getting #3 in November as plan #54564 described!

[timio]

Wasn't 4 supposed to come before 3?

[Pheidippides]

CBC (02-Nov-2017):
"Schmidt said the third LRT vehicle is expected to arrive at the end of November and the fourth in mid December."

CBC (07-Nov-2017):
"The 14th and last vehicle is well into production and the region is expecting it to be delivered in February."


Whether the 3rd vehicle to be delivered is 503 or 504 I am not sure that has been confirmed.

[trainspotter139]

CBC (02-Nov-2017):
"Schmidt said the third LRT vehicle is expected to arrive at the end of November and the fourth in mid December."

CBC (07-Nov-2017):
"The 14th and last vehicle is well into production and the region is expecting it to be delivered in February."


Whether the 3rd vehicle to be delivered is 503 or 504 I am not sure that has been confirmed.

Regional Council was told 504 would be delivered before 503.