From July 4 to 7, a 60-foot mockup of a light rail vehicle (LRV) returned to the Region of Waterloo as part of a joint event with the City of Kitchener during its Days of #KWAwesome on King Street between Queen and Young street in Downtown Kitchener. The electric LRVs, built by Bombardier, shared its spotlight with a new Grand River Transit (GRT) bus.
So what’s new with the LRT project these days?
In March 2014, GrandLinq was the selected as the consortium to design, build, finance, operate, and maintain the ION rapid transit system in the Region of Waterloo. Construction is expected to begin in late 2014.
The Stage 1 of the rapid transit project (known as ION) will be completed by fall 2017, and will consist of 19 km of light rail transit (LRT) from Conestoga Mall in Waterloo to Fairview Mall in Kitchener, and 17 km of adapted Bus Rapid Transit (aBRT) from Fairview Mall to Ainslie Terminal in Cambridge. The ION light rail vehicles will be 100% low-floor vehicles, and thus will be fully accessible.
In Stage 2 of the rapid transit project, the aBRT in Cambridge will be replaced by LRT. The purpose of aBRT is to increase ridership in order to obtain funding for the transition in LRT. After the completion of both stages of the rapid transit project, the urban centres of Waterloo, Kitchener, and Cambridge will be connected by 37 km of LRT.
The LRT will, for the most part, operate in existing roadways in the Region of Waterloo. It will have dedicated lanes on either side of the road, or in the middle of the road, separated from other traffic by curbs. In these sections, the LRVs must obey traffic signals. You might ask: how will the dedicated LRT lanes fit into the existing roadways? Surely they’re far too narrow! In some areas, the Region of Waterloo is selectively expropriating land (e.g. King Street south of Uptown) to fit additional lanes and platforms. In others, the LRVs will run on one-way loops (e.g. Downtown Kitchener and Uptown Waterloo) to reduce land requirements.
In sections where it will not run in existing roadways, it will make use of the existing rail tracks – for example, the Waterloo spur north of Uptown Waterloo. In these sections, the LRVs will be able to operate at speeds of up to 70 km/h.
But, you may ask: how is the LRT different from a streetcar system? The streetcar runs on the road. The streetcar is powered by overhead caternaries. Why not just buy more buses?
The LRVs are very similar to streetcars. However, the LRVs run in a dedicated lane, whereas streetcars do not. Furthermore, these LRVs will have higher capacity than streetcars – up to 200 per train. Finally, passengers will not need to cross lanes to get from the sidewalk to the LRT platforms to the vehicles: the stops will be located close to existing traffic intersections, and the platforms will be directly adjacent to the LRV lanes, to take advantage of the 100% low floor LRV design.
As for buying more buses – if you buy a region the buses required to support projected population growth, they will need more roads. If you build more roads, you will need more space than for an additional LRT lane. Using LRVs allows greater passenger density than with buses, allowing LRVs to impact other road users less.
Needless to say, I am looking forwards to the LRT opening in 2017!
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