ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[jamincan]

I'm not sure why, but you're really prone to misrepresenting facts related to ION. It opened about 1.5 years, which isn't great, but isn't that unusual for major infrastructure projects. The trains weren't about to fall apart - there were welding issues but not severe enough that the trains couldn't be used in service. They remained in service and a 15th unit that Bombardier provided as compensation to the region for they delays filled in as they were taken out of service individually (I'm actually not sure if the work is complete yet).

The slightly raised platforms are to allow level boarding so that the trains are accessible. I don't believe any other vehicle was really in the cards anyway, as we were piggybacking on the Metrolinx order for the Eglinton LRT in Toronto. Even if high-floor vehicles were an option, I strongly disagree that they would have been a good one - look at how disruptive they are to the streetscape in downtown Calgary, for example.

[ijmorlan]

Also, how were the City snow plows allowed to just plow the snow over the LRT tracks

Well...where are they supposed to put the snow? Snow plows - at least the ones we/most cities have - have angled blades that push it to the right side. Some sections of the track do run on the right side of where vehicles drive. Unless we bought a fleet of plows that have snow blowers that can blow it into a dump truck (which is extremely inefficient), they have to push the snow somewhere. Example, places like this or this. The normal snowplows don't or can't plow this since there is a curb and because the plow can damage the track, so there will be challenges.

When they designed and engineered this thing, they tried to put the tracks in the middle as much as they could for these sort of issues, but there are still sections it was not possible. And, since we live in a climate where we get tons of snow (sometimes, anyway), there will be challenges with snow removal. TBH, the system here runs okay. Comparably, I've spent a lot of time in Russia where they have heavy snowfall and streetcars/trams just like ours (sure it's "rapid transit" LRT and grade separated but still suffers from the same problems with climate and is as slow as a streetcar) and over there you still face days where the snow buggers things up. It's a pretty normal thing, though over here you'd think we would invest in better clearing measures given that we're economically superior.

Planning for snow, and snow removal, should have been part of the system design.

I don’t understand your statement about sections where putting the tracks in the middle was not possible. The rule for on-street trackage is single track at the side, double track in the middle, except for the 2 blocks on Benton/Frederick where a single track is in the middle. The question is why. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen an attempt at an explanation. How was it “not possible” for the single track on King, for example, from Allen to the public square to be put in the middle?

[ijmorlan]

Even if high-floor vehicles were an option, I strongly disagree that they would have been a good one - look at how disruptive they are to the streetscape in downtown Calgary, for example.

You would need significantly bigger (longer) ramps, and locations where the platform is effectively part of the sidewalk would need to be significantly redesigned. So I agree that even though the LRT stops only at specific locations, we get significant flexibility in station design from the low floor design.

[ac3r]

The rule for on-street trackage is single track at the side, double track in the middle, except for the 2 blocks on Benton/Frederick where a single track is in the middle. The question is why. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen an attempt at an explanation. How was it “not possible” for the single track on King, for example, from Allen to the public square to be put in the middle?

How can it be a rule be a rule...then not a rule? Lol. The design of this LRT was just a complete shit show. I guess it's better than nothing...but I've travelled to dozens of countries in my life, visited countless cities with transit systems and ours is easily somewhere near the bottom of the totem pole. I hope the second line in Cambridge isn't as bad, though I'm not crossing my fingers.

[tomh009]

Are those coulombs you are using for current?

I believe Dan is referring to the C-rate, http://web.mit.edu/evt/summary_battery_s...ations.pdf . It's a way of measuring discharge current that's normalized for battery capacity, a 1C discharge rate will fully discharge a battery in 1 hour. It basically measures how much stress a battery is under, as the safe discharge rate of a battery depends heavily on its capacity.

Ugh. Way to go whoever came up with this, using the symbol of a well-established SI unit to mean something completely different. 😥

[ijmorlan]

The rule for on-street trackage is single track at the side, double track in the middle, except for the 2 blocks on Benton/Frederick where a single track is in the middle. The question is why. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen an attempt at an explanation. How was it “not possible” for the single track on King, for example, from Allen to the public square to be put in the middle?

How can it be a rule be a rule...then not a rule? Lol. The design of this LRT was just a complete shit show. I guess it's better than nothing...but I've travelled to dozens of countries in my life, visited countless cities with transit systems and ours is easily somewhere near the bottom of the totem pole. I hope the second line in Cambridge isn't as bad, though I'm not crossing my fingers.

My point is, you said they put the tracks in the middle except where they can’t; but really they put the tracks in the middle precisely when there are two tracks together, on-street, with the one exception for those 2 short blocks. I haven’t seen any evidence that it has anything to do with what is “possible”.

(the other exception one might think of is the stop at King & Victoria, but there you see one track on each side of the street, continuing the rule that lone tracks are at the curb and a pair of tracks are in the middle)

[clasher]

Yeah, I've used a very similar unit, I found it to be acceptable, but it would have been useless in yesterday's snow. It was kinda handy when I was lazy or my back was hurting, but it wasn't any faster than doing it by hand. Maybe if the snow was particularly heavy but not too deep, it would have been an improvement in shoveling time, but when I didn't have back pain, I shovel pretty fast. But if you're a person who struggles with snow shoveling for any reason it will do the trick for most of our storms.

I had a 100ft cord (so similar length) and that let me do my entire property and my neighbours sidewalks. But cords suck in the winter, because unless you get a very good one, the cold stiffens the plastic casing making them a bit more unwieldy.

I started shovelling a huge driveway (probably could park 12 cars in it) by hand yesterday but buddy had one of those plug-in snowthrowers and it worked fine in yesterday's dump. It was slow going but I was pretty tired from just shovelling the sidewalk that it wouldn't likely have been faster to do that whole driveway by hand. They can't be driven hard into the snow like a gas snowblower. It also made quick work of the little dusting of snow we woke up to today.

[ac3r]

My point is, you said they put the tracks in the middle except where they can’t; but really they put the tracks in the middle precisely when there are two tracks together, on-street, with the one exception for those 2 short blocks. I haven’t seen any evidence that it has anything to do with what is “possible”.

(the other exception one might think of is the stop at King & Victoria, but there you see one track on each side of the street, continuing the rule that lone tracks are at the curb and a pair of tracks are in the middle)

Ah okay, I see what you mean now.

I dug out a copy of the printouts of the Cambridge line that RoW provided to me. Looks like the entire route is double track and doesn't split off at any point which is good for snow removal...though the part where it runs through a roundabout will be unusual to clear. I wonder how it'll be able to handle the gradient changes around the Grand River Valley. If you/anyone rides it between Mill and Block Line, I'm sure you can hear when the train loses grip, slows down, sprays a ton of sand and then speeds up again (seemingly in any weather, but particularly worse in the spring/autumn/winter). That incline is not that steep.

Also, maybe I have an older copy of the plans but I thought this ran through a roundabout which would make snow removal harder. I don't see any roundabouts in my documents.

[bravado]

My point is, you said they put the tracks in the middle except where they can’t; but really they put the tracks in the middle precisely when there are two tracks together, on-street, with the one exception for those 2 short blocks. I haven’t seen any evidence that it has anything to do with what is “possible”.

(the other exception one might think of is the stop at King & Victoria, but there you see one track on each side of the street, continuing the rule that lone tracks are at the curb and a pair of tracks are in the middle)

Ah okay, I see what you mean now.

I dug out a copy of the printouts of the Cambridge line that RoW provided to me. Looks like the entire route is double track and doesn't split off at any point which is good for snow removal...though the part where it runs through a roundabout will be unusual to clear. I wonder how it'll be able to handle the gradient changes around the Grand River Valley. If you/aneone rides it between Mill and Block Line, I'm sure you can hear when the train loses grip, slows down, sprays a ton of sand and then speeds up again (seemingly in any weather, but particularly worse in the spring/autumn/winter). That incline is not that steep.

Also, maybe I have an older copy of the plans but I thought this ran through a roundabout which would make snow removal harder. I don't see any roundabouts in my documents.

Stage 2 ION is supposed to go right through the roundabout at Beverly and Dundas that hasn't been built yet. This is the text version of their plans from a public consultation:

"When an ION vehicle approaches the roundabout, gates, bells and flashing lights will activate on the entry lanes to temporarily prevent vehicles from entering the roundabout until the train passes through. Exit lanes will remain open to allow any vehicles currently in the roundabout to exit safely before the train enters the intersection. The time required to complete this operation is minimal and is not anticipated to significantly impact traffic operations."

There is a photo of the route through the Beverly roundabout on Slide H:
http://rapidtransit.regionofwaterloo.ca/...Design.pdf

[ac3r]

Hmm, I wonder if you have an older proposal then? Mine are dated 2020, those are dated November 2019. Hard to say because there isn't much transparency when dealing with anyone in this region (and since I don't work with infrastructure, I don't have the most up to date information regarding that).

Here's the total keyplan that I have...

Also...

Exit lanes will remain open to allow any vehicles currently in the roundabout to exit safely before the train enters the intersection. The time required to complete this operation is minimal and is not anticipated to significantly impact traffic operations."

Lol. If it does indeed run through a roundabout, I'll be curious to see how the signaling works. If the train ends up having to halt to allow drivers to exit the roundabout before it can go through then... :| Par for the course here, I guess.

[bravado]

Hmm, I wonder if you have an older proposal then? Mine are dated 2020, those are dated November 2019. Hard to say because there isn't much transparency when dealing with anyone in this region (and since I don't work with infrastructure, I don't have the most up to date information regarding that).

Here's the total keyplan that I have...

I have to trust your more recent files and expertise on this one... but I do know that they're clearing the land at Beverly for the roundabout construction. Zone 32 is right where it would be.

Curious how they'll get around it if the 2019 plan isn't the same anymore... I've found that the Region staff is eager to help when I ask for things, but you have to bug first - they don't publish much of anything

[ac3r]

To be honest, I don't know much about the future LRT plans. I'm privy to some information since we rely on a lot of planning in my field, but since we aren't working directly with the rapid transit in the region I have to say I'm fairly clueless as in I don't know all the nuances and little updates. It'd be nice if the cities/region would provide consistent, up to date information on not only this, be it anything from new building projects to bike lanes to roads. That's bureaucracy I suppose...

[danbrotherston]

Yes, like I said, I don't know what wattage the units I looked at were actually using, but there are a wide variety of units available with different battery system:

Here's the 1700 USD Toro unit I was quoting:

https://www.toro.com/en/homeowner/snow-b...-60v-39926

Even if we take the same current draw of 3C (I used 5C which is a typical maximum draw for LiIon batteries) the larger batteries will lead to a wattage of 2700 Watts or 3.6 HP.

Given Toro has another unit for 999 USD that's also at 60 watts, seems like the Ryobi system is significantly less powerful for the price.  But obviously the blowers could be drawing less than maximum power.

I'm also not 100% sure how the power draw would be distributed, the motor should draw more power when under load, so it could be that the maximum power is significantly higher than 3C and 20 minutes is only the average runtime leading to an average draw of 3C.

Are those coulombs you are using for current? A coulomb is one ampere for the duration of one second, I think you want just plain old amperes (and then power is measured in watts, and one watt is equal to one amp at one volt).

Anyway, that Toro has two 7.5 Ah batteries. If it has the same 20-minute runtime at heavy load, then it's 22.5A x 60V x 2 = 2700W. That's roughly the same as a 20A household circuit. (Coulombs are generally not useful for calculating power as they include the time element.)

Of course, if the Toro can run only 10 minutes on those batteries, then the draw is much higher.

No, C in this case refers to charge rate. 1C means 1 hour charge and charge, so amps==amp hours. 3C means 20 mins run time. 

But again these are continuous numbers. I suspect snow blowers have some peaks and valleys in demand so we are only seeing an average when you look at duration.

[danbrotherston]

I believe Dan is referring to the C-rate, http://web.mit.edu/evt/summary_battery_s...ations.pdf . It's a way of measuring discharge current that's normalized for battery capacity, a 1C discharge rate will fully discharge a battery in 1 hour. It basically measures how much stress a battery is under, as the safe discharge rate of a battery depends heavily on its capacity.

Ugh. Way to go whoever came up with this, using the symbol of a well-established SI unit to mean something completely different. 😥

Yes, an unfortunate choice of symbol.

[trainspotter139]

Right.

It's been a long time since we had this type of crazy snow. CTV is saying 25-35 cm in the region, which might be the most in 20+ years.

Can't say were weren't warned, though I still feel bad for people stuck on highways (portions of the 401 in Toronto were closed as well). But at the same time, sometimes you just need to stay indoors until thing cleaned up.

We were warned, and rail is extremely easy to keep keep clear of snow. Even light rail. It wasn't snowing that fast as it took several hours before the 4cm had accumulated that the plows wait for before they start clearing the roads.

If GrandLinq/Keolis wasn't out there running a tram or or two all night to keep the tracks clear, that is incompetence on their part as we can easily expect multiple 5+ centimetre snow falls in a season, even in this day and age of climate change.

Also, how were the City snow plows allowed to just plow the snow over the LRT tracks? As easy as it is for light rail to keep up with falling snow, there's still such a thing as "too deep" for a tram. That is incompetence on the City's part to not make sure that didn't happen. It's also a bit more incompetence for GrandLinq to not expect such might happen and not have a rapid response contingency available.

They have a pretty bad operator shortage at the moment and are operating by maximizing Transport Canada limits on operator drive time and occasionally cancelling some train trips. If it were possible for them to operate trains after hours they would have. But when you hit that TC hours limit you're basically screwed.