ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[dtkvictim]

That is infeasible. You talk about grade separation as if it’s a minor tweak to the design, like having heated platforms. It’s not.

And in any case, it makes no sense to spend a huge amount of money grade separating the system to save one life per year (or whatever; probably not even that many) when you could save many more lives by building more LRT lines similar to the one we have and getting more traffic out of cars.

More fundamentally, you cannot make the world safe. There are situations in which one can feasibly eliminate classes of hazard. For example, machinery that takes both hands to activate, ensuring that one does not accidentally amputate ones other hand. There are other situations where similar preventive measures are either infeasible or outright impossible.

Here is your mental gymnastics award: http://www.americare-health.com/wp-conte.../award.jpg

There is nothing "infeasible" about designing a rapid transit system to be as safe as it possibly can be to prevent accidents and death as often as possible. Not sure why you would attempt to argue otherwise. As it stands, the LRT essentially has no real safety features to prevent collisions (whether it is with a vehicle or individual) other than putting the burden of not getting maimed or killed on the victim rather than a technology whose safety essentially boils down to a loud horn and "please stay off tracks" signage due to the region and tax payers being too damn cheap. Look what that has got us...a guarantee for a lifetime of endless collisions and deaths because there's no tweaking it. It's built already and it was built poorly.

While I realize even if you elevated the entire thing or built it as a light metro you could and still likely would inevitably have an incident, that's just the nature of things, you cannot make the argument that it's just not worth the money to save lives or to treat it like a simple numbers game like "well who cares if one kid possibly dies, saving their life is just not worth the money for good design and it was their fault for crossing; we should also build more LRT lines so less cars hit people too." What kind of reasoning is that?

So you deny and mock his argument, and then immediately acknowledge he is right?

Building elevated or underground rail was infeasible, it was impossible. It's called politics. The only choices were build LRT, or stick with the status quo. The same status quo that I mentioned above which saw many students hit by cars over my 4 years at the school, vs the 1 student hit in nearly 4 years of LRT operation.

The safety futures of our LRT are hardly exceptional on a global scale. Are you suggesting that the hundreds (perhaps thousands) of tram lines of Europe ought to be torn out and buried underground?

I'm not suggesting improvements can't be made, but you seem to be going on an illogical personal vendetta against our system for some reason.

[danbrotherston]

There’s all sorts of local trams right at ground level across the world. Is this a uniquely bad design in KW or just the unfortunate growing pains period?

I don’t go downtown much, but in terms of safety I was shocked by how many kids were crammed on the 1m wide sidewalk in front of KCI. Why aren’t our streets designed for the modes that actually move the most people?

The same thing happens on University Ave. near UW and Laurier (and Conestoga College). Honestly...it's revealing how badly our engineering department has failed MOST of the people in the city. And I do say most. Yes, most people drive, but most of those people are also failed by the system.

I don't think KW's system is uniquely bad...but transportation and safety in North America universally sucks.

FWIW though...there's a reason we have fought so hard for the 30km/h limit. With the tram travelling at 40km/h the kid has even odds of surviving (maybe better than even because they're young), at 30km/h, they'd have a 90% chance of surviving. Of course, he's just lucky it wasn't someone in a vanity pickup who hit him...they'd usually be travelling much faster.

[danbrotherston]

I think we have a responsibility to design around human behaviour, and to me it seems like excessive space for cars is what’s causing the LRT and pedestrian space to not be as safe as they could be.

This is exactly on point...why isn't the crossing in front of the school? Well because it's where the other road is...pedestrians (which far outnumber cars at that intersection are not the prioritized user.

Hell, pedestrians aren't even the prioritized vehicle AT LRT STATIONS!

[neonjoe]

It's also a tradeoff of the ability for emergency vehicles to enter the ROW. Otherwise we could have made the LRT median a bit less penetrable if they had used some sort of fence. This would essentially 'grade separate' the LRT except at intersections.

Not really a fan of how this looks but maybe take the UoG example and put up something adjacent to the sidewalk in problematic areas.
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.5342466,...384!8i8192

[KevinL]

The victim has been confirmed to be a 16-year-old male; no word on his current condition. They haven't explicitly confirmed he's a CHCI student, but it's implied.

[ijmorlan]

I think we have a responsibility to design around human behaviour, and to me it seems like excessive space for cars is what’s causing the LRT and pedestrian space to not be as safe as they could be.

This is exactly on point...why isn't the crossing in front of the school? Well because it's where the other road is...pedestrians (which far outnumber cars at that intersection are not the prioritized user.

Hell, pedestrians aren't even the prioritized vehicle AT LRT STATIONS!

What are you talking about? The crossing at the traffic light is precisely in front of the main entrance:

https://goo.gl/maps/yosxfDy6K6S8QTr88

I don’t see how it could be more appropriately situated.

Now if you want to argue that the Betzner Ave. sidewalk should be extended to Charles and a crossing installed there, or that there should be a crossing at Pandora, we would have something to discuss. Where do you think the pedestrian crossing should be?

In most places, road intersections are the proper place for pedestrian crossings anyway, because the pedestrian routes crossing the street are sidewalks on intersecting streets.

[danbrotherston]

This is exactly on point...why isn't the crossing in front of the school? Well because it's where the other road is...pedestrians (which far outnumber cars at that intersection are not the prioritized user.

Hell, pedestrians aren't even the prioritized vehicle AT LRT STATIONS!

What are you talking about? The crossing at the traffic light is precisely in front of the main entrance:

https://goo.gl/maps/yosxfDy6K6S8QTr88

I don’t see how it could be more appropriately situated.

Now if you want to argue that the Betzner Ave. sidewalk should be extended to Charles and a crossing installed there, or that there should be a crossing at Pandora, we would have something to discuss. Where do you think the pedestrian crossing should be?

In most places, road intersections are the proper place for pedestrian crossings anyway, because the pedestrian routes crossing the street are sidewalks on intersecting streets.

Yeah, sorry, my bad. I had confused the configuration up at KCI, which also has a very narrow uncomfortable sidewalk...even more so I think.

As for Cameron Heights, yes, they are lined up. As for where crossings should be....they should be where pedestrians need and want to cross regardless of roads. Usually they follow roads because we rarely consider transportation routes without cars.

[ijmorlan]

Yeah, sorry, my bad. I had confused the configuration up at KCI, which also has a very narrow uncomfortable sidewalk...even more so I think.

As for Cameron Heights, yes, they are lined up. As for where crossings should be....they should be where pedestrians need and want to cross regardless of roads. Usually they follow roads because we rarely consider transportation routes without cars.

OK, now I understand.

I would say that crossings are also at roads because the pedestrian routes are sidewalks, which are immediately beside roads. That’s not to say we shouldn’t have more crossings at other locations where important pedestrian traffic routes meet the road, and more pedestrian routes which are not sidewalks, but crossings at intersections are natural as long as sidewalks are standard (and I think we want them to be standard in almost all situations).

[timc]

It's also a tradeoff of the ability for emergency vehicles to enter the ROW. Otherwise we could have made the LRT median a bit less penetrable if they had used some sort of fence. This would essentially 'grade separate' the LRT except at intersections.

And the fact that no emergency vehicle will ever use the ROW makes that all the more frustrating.

[Acitta]

Another one.
Pedestrian struck and killed by Ion train in Waterloo
Police believe he had been walking on the tracks

[ac3r]

It mAkEs nO SeNsE To sPeNd a hUgE AmOuNt oF MoNeY GrAdE SePaRaTiNg tHe sYsTeM To sAvE OnE LiFe pEr yEaR

Glad to hear the kid who got struck survived. Sad to hear there has nonetheless been an additional fatality. Hopefully Keolis/RoW has some good therapy services available for the LRV operators for what is going to be an inevitably long term problem: minimal safety, constant accidents and deaths every so often.

[ijmorlan]

It mAkEs nO SeNsE To sPeNd a hUgE AmOuNt oF MoNeY GrAdE SePaRaTiNg tHe sYsTeM To sAvE OnE LiFe pEr yEaR

Glad to hear the kid who got struck survived. Sad to hear there has nonetheless been an additional fatality. Hopefully Keolis/RoW has some good therapy services available for the LRV operators for what is going to be an inevitably long term problem: minimal safety, constant accidents and deaths every so often.

Why are you hyper-focussed on a tiny amount of death and injury related to the LRT? Why aren’t you agitating for grade-separating all our major car routes? Even if we did suddenly get a bunch of extra money, grade-separating the LRT wouldn’t save as many lives as a lot of other ways I can think of spending the money. Why is this so hard to understand? And why are you doing tHaT tHiNg with the capitalization? Could it be that you have no rational response to what I’m saying?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jFqhjaGh30

[ac3r]

It mAkEs nO SeNsE To sPeNd a hUgE AmOuNt oF MoNeY GrAdE SePaRaTiNg tHe sYsTeM To sAvE OnE LiFe pEr yEaR

Glad to hear the kid who got struck survived. Sad to hear there has nonetheless been an additional fatality. Hopefully Keolis/RoW has some good therapy services available for the LRV operators for what is going to be an inevitably long term problem: minimal safety, constant accidents and deaths every so often.

Why are you hyper-focussed on a tiny amount of death and injury related to the LRT? Why aren’t you agitating for grade-separating all our major car routes? Even if we did suddenly get a bunch of extra money, grade-separating the LRT wouldn’t save as many lives as a lot of other ways I can think of spending the money. Why is this so hard to understand? And why are you doing tHaT tHiNg with the capitalization? Could it be that you have no rational response to what I’m saying?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jFqhjaGh30

Why are you okay with a faulty transit system? That relatedly fails in the winter, gets into accidents all the time and which has maimed a child and taken two human lives and traumatized the people who operate the trains as well as the individuals who have been in accidents or have lost loved ones?

What's so hard about admitting that it's faulty and should have been designed better so as to avoid this?

This isn't a "tiny amount of death and injury", it's regular occurrence. Dozens of accidents, two deaths and junk trains that can't handle a bit of freezing rain. You can't pretend it isn't if you want but it doesn't change the reality. And pointing at the obvious fact that road vehicles kill more people is meaningless. Of course they do because there's more of them, but the issue here is faulty trains and poor safety.

Yeah we should think of the children, great observation. Consider the one that was just struck and hurt so bad they were air lifted away any has now had his life utterly altered.

[neonjoe]

The Toronto subway claims many lives a year as well and its grade separated. We don't know the circumstances for this specific case but walking in a fenced area of the system in the middle of the night could have been due to many different reasons.
With the TO case, platform screen doors could help but really there's a point of declining returns for the investment made. Where there's a will to trespass there will always be a way.

[ZEBuilder]

Why are you okay with a faulty transit system? That relatedly fails in the winter, gets into accidents all the time and which has maimed a child and taken two human lives and traumatized the people who operate the trains as well as the individuals who have been in accidents or have lost loved ones?

What's so hard about admitting that it's faulty and should have been designed better so as to avoid this?

This isn't a "tiny amount of death and injury", it's regular occurrence. Dozens of accidents, two deaths and junk trains that can't handle a bit of freezing rain. You can't pretend it isn't if you want but it doesn't change the reality. And pointing at the obvious fact that road vehicles kill more people is meaningless. Of course they do because there's more of them, but the issue here is faulty trains and poor safety.

It isn't a regular occurrence. There's been a total of two fatal collisions involving the LRT (both within the train only corridors in Waterloo where pedestrians shouldn't be in the first place) and then there has been two serious collisions resulting in air lifting to hospital, one cyclist at King and Green and the most recent incident in front of Cameron Heights. That is a total of only 4 major incidents with the LRT. Now look at collision data, in the 5 years that the region has recent data for (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020). There were a total of 30 fatalities from car accidents, as well as numerous other people having to be airlifted. Since the ION was put into service in June 2019 (a total of 1361 days of service) there has only been 2 deaths which is roughly 1 every 680 days, compared to the 30 deaths from car related collisions in those 5 years which means a death every 60 days on our roads. So considering the number of trains running on the line daily it is safe, obviously there could be improvements yet the same thing can be said about roads and you aren't saying anything about that. 

This is the first winter we've ever had substantial trouble with the LRT system so you can't justify the system being bad when it takes time to get more equipment, you can't just go to Walmart and het ice scrapper's for our trains, nor can you get the deicing machine they had up in Waterloo these things take time, next year if it's the same problem it's more justifiable but it's the first year we've had major problems so stop saying the system is shit. 
It is hundreds of times better than having the 7 and 8 at capacity for hours on end, even the 22 was bad for numerous hours having all the kids from Cameron going to school and coming home from school and the kids from KCI doing the same. Yes grade separation and a subway would obviously be better but those cost incrementally more money and at the time we didn't have the ability to spend more money on it as has been said numerous times on this forum by numerous people. So just be thankful we have a half decent rapid transit system.