nfitz
Superstar
Then why won't the LRT be segragated in an exclusive ROW if most of the Transitway already is?
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Waterloo to get $300 million for Rapid Transit
- Thread starter denfromoakvillemilton
- Start date
afransen
Senior Member
What evidence is there that this is needed? Congestion on the iXpress? It's an awful lot of money to spend for questionable improvement in service. This is $1000 for each man, woman and child in the region.
doady
Senior Member
^ I am pretty sure $300,000 is just for the province's portion of funding. The total cost is probably around $1 billion...
No, this is what Ottawa did the first time around. Running LRT at-grade through downtown? I thought they would have learned from Ottawa's mistake, but I guess not...
Umm.... no. The entire Phase 1 of the Ottawa LRT is grade-separated, with nearly subway length platforms and actual stations.
DavidJamesTO
Active Member
It's owned by CN and operated by Goderich-Exeter, a regional company. It's also used by a heritage railway, the Waterloo Central, who run a train from Waterloo to St Jacobs to the north.
While the lines will be operated in the streets, they will have both dedicated lanes and signal priority over road traffic, as demonstrated in the visuals shown here. It will also most likely link to GO services as GO is not interested in using the Weber Street station for the long term. It will serve more stops than iXpress and will not be caught by the same traffic jams that slow iXpress services. It may be slower than the current iXpress route, but since the population of Waterloo Region is expected go grow by a quarter-million people in the next twenty years, there is no doubt that mixed road traffic isn't going to get any faster.
When I saw this thread, I fully expected wailing and gnashing of teeth by those who want cities to become less suburban and denser, yet still look down on smaller cities like KW and Hamilton that try to do so. I wasn't disappointed.
ShonTron
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I would like to see Kingston Transit beef up the bus service more before pouring money into LRT. With a short, community-based route, this would likely be a modern streetcar type of operation anyway - perhaps wider stop spacing than a bus, but far narrower than the high concept LRT found in Calgary, Edmonton, or planned for Ottawa or even Waterloo Region (which is a bit closer to streetcar than the others on the light rail continuum). It could happen, on that corridor you suggest, but not likely. Better would be to introduce a high-quality minimum 15-minute service on the CFB/RMC-Downtown-Queen's-Battersea-SLC-(Amherstview?) corridor and the Princess St Downtown-VIA-Cataraqui Centre corridor first, and beef up the feeders, and then see if you need rail transit.
Halifax the same thing. Downtown Halifax and Dalhousie are very walkable, apart from that the HRM is very decentralized with a few denser neighbourhoods around downtown Haifax and old Dartmouth, after that it's almost as spread out as Sudbury.
andrewpmk
Senior Member
LRT in Kingston? Forget it, you need a population of at least 500000 to make it economically viable. Plus, it would have to run in mixed traffic because streets in the old part of the city are only 2 lanes wide. Definitely focus on improving the bus service, in particular the awful service to the train station and more service on evenings/Sundays.
Second_in_pie
Senior Member
BRT would definitely work better for Kingston and Halifax. But LRT is still a great choice for K-W, Hamilton, London and Windsor. We really need to get transit sorted out in all our cities though, so even the smaller ones can grow up and not sprawl out. If only people could invest a bit in their cities and their infrastructures.
Even for a medium sized city, BRT is still the way to go in my opinion. The projected riderships in most of these cities falls well within the range of BRT. It also has the advantage of being a fraction of the cost of LRT. When you're trying to first put in a rapid transit system, you want to get as much system in place as possible with your initial investment. You can build nearly 3x the amount of system when doing BRT compared to LRT. LRT is good if you want to increase ridership along selected corridors, or the existing transit along that corridor is no longer sustainable in its current form. BRT is good for generating city-wide ridership where there was very little before. If the name of the game is creating a city-wide system from scratch at a reasonable budget, BRT is definitely the way to go.
When Ottawa was having the BRT vs LRT debate in the late 70s and early 80s, it was roughly the same size that K-W is now. The poster-child for BRT is only a few hours away from K-W, so why not learn from their experiences? If the system reaches capacity 20-30 years down the road, then incremental LRT expansion would be easy, because the ROW is already there, it just needs to be upgraded.
Side Note: BRT is the easiest form of 'intermediate rapid transit' that you can do. By intermediate, I mean a line that you know you will be upgrading to something else in 20-30 years. It is very cost effective for 5000ish pphpd routes, which is realistically what most of these routes would be seeing anyway (7000 pphpd max for the foreseeable future). It also creates a transit corridor, and allows for easy diversion onto a parallel route if the corridor needs to be updated. Rail can only operate along rails, making diversion for construction reasons very difficult, if not impossible, to do. Upgrading from BRT to LRT or from BRT to subway is infinitely easier than upgrading from LRT to subway, simply because of the fact that the buses can be rerouted somewhere else during construction, without the need to run new rails, or shut down the rail service and replace it with a parallel bus service (think shuttle buses when the subway is down, yeah, doesn't work too well).
Second_in_pie
Senior Member
I maintain that LRT is a good choice for K-W and Hamilton. K-W I know has a big central development plan that the LRT will experience well, and has a large transit corridor that's pretty crowded. LRT will do well, even a TC type (though it'd be nice if they could make it as separate as possible; big, big ROWs and minimal grade crossings.) Hamilton's a bigger city, and already has a lot of density and space to infill and redevelop.
London I'm not so sure of, but I think they need some work to build the city up rather than out (if growth rates in these cities starts to climb, of course.) If BRT can do that, that's fine, but I feel like LRT would be better at attracting avenuized development. I was kind of grasping at straws for Windsor, but I think it'd be in the same line of what to do for London.
London I'm not so sure of, but I think they need some work to build the city up rather than out (if growth rates in these cities starts to climb, of course.) If BRT can do that, that's fine, but I feel like LRT would be better at attracting avenuized development. I was kind of grasping at straws for Windsor, but I think it'd be in the same line of what to do for London.
nfitz
Superstar
I lived in Waterloo for a while. This is very much a build it and they will come project. There are many routes far more deserving for LRT than this in Toronto.
In terms of urban development, it's a great project. In terms of prioritizing funding based on demand, it's lousy.
I wonder if in 2011 they will delay it for 5 years.
In terms of urban development, it's a great project. In terms of prioritizing funding based on demand, it's lousy.
I wonder if in 2011 they will delay it for 5 years.
dunkalunk
Senior Member
The Region of Waterloo owns the track, and there is only one train a day (IIRC, CN) being run on those tracks to ship chemicals to an Elmira plant. There is no reason why dangerous chemicals cannot be shipped by a truck, and there is no reason why one track could be left as heavy rail to continue to serve Elmira, while the other track is light rail. However, the heavy rail track would have to be torn up regardless to be upgraded. If Ottawa can get away with running their O-Train on a still functional freight rail corridor, then there is no reason why it cannot be done in Waterloo.
ssiguy2
Senior Member
London is now smaller than KWC but has much higher transit usage and much much higher on a per-capita basis. Hamilton and Ottawa already have their money and I wouldn't be surprised if KWC doesn't get a dime until London gets the same amount. You might also hear some bitching from Windsor as well.
nfitz
Superstar
That line doesn't seem particularly narrow; they might be able to get two LRT tracks in beside the existing railway track. There isn't much in the way of structures ... off hand, one bridge over Laurel Creek, that would likely have to be rebuilt anyway; and one overpass crossing the track, which if my memory serves me correctly (because I used to walk under it for a few years, as it was the shortest way home from work) is wide enough for 3 tracks.
As for cities like London and Windsor bitching. You can't fund, what no one has asked for. Waterloo has been talking about this for almost a decade - long before the Big Move came along. I don't see any outstanding proposal from London or Windsor waiting for funding.
As for cities like London and Windsor bitching. You can't fund, what no one has asked for. Waterloo has been talking about this for almost a decade - long before the Big Move came along. I don't see any outstanding proposal from London or Windsor waiting for funding.