Rolling into Kitchener-Waterloo for a quick day trip

I plan on live-tweeting my tour of the ION LRT, like I did in Ottawa

Got off the GO bus at the abandoned Kitchener Bus Terminal. This was a pretty great bus facility, but it’s not needed when you have a rapid transit spine like KW does now

Gaukel Street has been pedestrianized for COVID

I love the LRT passing through the Manulife offices (and former King Centre shopping mall). Layered urbanism!

Cross-platform transfer between the LRT and buses at Fairway station. Very convenient! – bei Fairway ION Station

There’s a new pedestrian crossing between Courtland Ave and Fairview Park Mall. There can be opportunities to improve projects after they open. Unfortunately this one required a fight by the community! More info from @TriTAG @JamesHoweWR @bmdoucet

The LRT makes a couple tight curves at Hayward Ave, which really slows things down. Trains just CRAWL through here, which new builds should be trying to avoid. They should have continued following the rail line down to the hydro corridor

Full railway signals and crossing arms as the LRV crosses Ottawa Street

Ottawa Station is set back needlessly far from the street

The segment of the LRT on Ottawa Street (and on Borden, but less so) crossed A LOT of driveways and side streets without “protection”. Works fine and @bmdoucet says few reports of accidents, but this design wouldn’t be permitted in many jurisdictions

The LRT runs through some declining industrial areas. At the site of the former (huge) Schneider’s meat packing plant cranes rise in the distance

Lite Brite signs to warn drivers of coming LRVs abound, as do track greasers for reducing wheel/rail noise along the line

Love these types of bike route signs. Good reminder to drivers too

These might be common elsewhere, but they’re not common in Ontario

“Transit Security” waits to board the next train. These guys do fare inspections too and are employees of a private company

I’ve had my fare checked more times in one day on ION than the sum of times I’ve EVER been checked on the TTC

Blown away by the amount of development in downtown Kitchener, including the first new office building in decades

Includes a new mass timber building where the facade of the demolished building is printed on the glass. Not so sure about that one...

King Street in the heart of downtown Kitchener. The LRT line goes to great effort to avoid running down this stretch of street due to traditional NIMBY business fears

Maybe one day they’ll move the northbound track here and save the line some curves and unnecessary diversion

Obligatory photo of the gorgeous Kaufman Lofts (Classic design... now with LRT tracks!)

There’s a bus stop outside that could have been designed as a cross-platform transfer but wasn’t due to the topic of the next tweet

Central Station

Now it’s just the top end of downtown (with the old+new Google campus in the background) but the plans are to relocate the train station here and to build a new bus terminal with development

Unfortunately the private sector partner has pulled out due to COVID

The rail bridge here was built with train platforms already built-in. Planning!

In the distance you can see where the line transitions between curbside running and median running

Waterloo Public Square

Lively on this beautiful and unusually warm day

Where the light rail and the heavy rail meet. Freight to the left and LRT to the right

A few fright trains per week still use this line to serve Uniroyal in Elmira

Also, a high speed switch with a movable frog! Unexpected place for such a serious piece of rail infrastructure!

The most interesting part of the Waterloo Region LRT is the gauntlet tracks at the stations on the segment that’s shared with freight

An ingenious solution that plenty of planners and engineers told me was impossible... until Waterloo Region went and did it anyway!

New bus terminal under construction at University of Waterloo station

Interestingly, the design includes a level crossing for the bus-only road - a good design that many would never consider

And unlike two other Ontario universities, the goal isn’t to “get buses off of campus”

At UW the LRT crosses right across the grand stairway to the new engineering building

They’ve also built a sky bridge over the line

At Willis Way station there’s another LRT-bus cross-platform transfer

Love it!

Unfortunately, Willis Way suffers from the same design flaw as many ION LRT stops: Access is only officially permitted from one end of the platform

In this case, it’s the opposite end of the platform from Uptown shops and restos

@bmdoucet strikes his best “angry resident” post

*pose