I mean people will cross where ever they want anyways, nothing except literally fencing off the guideway will stop that. Ped signals can be timed to avoid trains as much as possible (and Mx is probably more willing to do so vs car signals) so I'm honestly not concerned about those. People who are expecting this to be truly Rapid are not being realistic. It will be high capacity and avoid traffic, but it is still a surface level tram through downtown - you can't fudge grade seperation in highly pedestrianized areas if you want speed. Hamilton spent a lot of time arguing between BRT and LRT which was just plain dumb, as they really should have been arguing between LRT and an actual Light Metro.

I do wish the international village section looks more like a european pedestrian area (with limited car access for deliveries and property access) vs what the RCD presents.
 
The way Metrolinx is designing this (even without the City's requests), it will likely be slower than existing bus service.

it's basically going to be a streetcar. Especially since they are removing most of the "rapid" features of the original design which were there to save travel time (403 overpass, limited signalized intersections, etc.).
 
It's a street level tram through a downtown, it was never going to be rapid without a serious hit to the pedestrian realm. It's not really comparable to any of the other Mx LRTs, Ion might be close but only for a small section and that also has a lot of crossings. FWLRT is a very different adjacent land use, as are the surface portions of ECLRT. It will offer much higher capacity and reliability vs the current bus sytem.

I do hope however that the folks in charge come to their senses for the A-line and realize that grade seperation isn't a luxury.
 
KW's ION has a section with several traffic lights in succession near the Grand River Hospital and riding the LRT is never an issue because it breezes through all the lights (Transit Signal Priority). Even when riding the LRT outside of this specific section, it rarely stops for traffic lights, and even if it does, it's usually just a few seconds of wait for the signal phase to change. That's why more pedestrian signals are not necessarily bad for transit, but transit should always get priority so its not bogged down.

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I end up seeing plenty of people cross the tracks midblock anyway in areas downtown or uptown where the crossings are a little further apart, especially at Grand river hostpital and kitchener market where there are only exits on one side of the station
 
How does a pedestrian signal work in this context? It would be disabled when an approaching train is detected, but would otherwise trigger a flashing light to stop car traffic? Is this some common off-the-shelf product or is this some bespoke solution with expensive boondoggle potential? If a pedestrian signal doesn’t trigger (ex train detected), would pedestrians lose faith in the signal and just jaywalk anyways?

Sorry if I sound like a hater, just trying to wrap my head around it.

Re: rapid - I suppose if in 100 years the city wants to speed the system up, they could pursue a downtown tunnel, like what Portland is considering for their LRT.
 
ownthesky said:
How does a pedestrian signal work in this context? It would be disabled when an approaching train is detected, but would otherwise trigger a flashing light to stop car traffic? Is this some common off-the-shelf product or is this some bespoke solution with expensive boondoggle potential? If a pedestrian signal doesn’t trigger (ex train detected), would pedestrians lose faith in the signal and just jaywalk anyways?

Sorry if I sound like a hater, just trying to wrap my head around it.

Re: rapid - I suppose if in 100 years the city wants to speed the system up, they could pursue a downtown tunnel, like what Portland is considering for their LRT.
Click to expand...
It’s a signalized intersection most likely, just for pedestrians.
 
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While taking a European square type design approach around Gore Park might make sense where there are many pedestrians and it might be acceptable to have the LRT moving at only 20km/h, the rest of the route is meant to be a transit improvement with speeds 50-60 km/h so having pedestrian signals (with transit priority) and some barriers to crossing in the wrong place makes sense. The greater the distance between signalized crossings, the greater the number of people who are going to dangerously cut across the tracks.
 
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