Sean Marshall

Tag: Grand River Transit

  • Ion: An Ontario LRT that somehow works

    Ion: An Ontario LRT that somehow works

    There is a light rail system in Ontario that works in the snow. ION LRT at University of Waterloo.

    Less than a two hours drive or train ride from Toronto, where that city’s first light rail line opened to universal disdain, a light rail line has been operating without incident for over five years. Trains operate like clockwork, signal priority works, and it has become the backbone of a regional transit system.

    Though the Ion LRT project was subject to several delays, opening eighteen months behind schedule, operations have been notably smooth since the public opening on June 21, 2019. The delay is attributed to Bombardier’s late delivery of their Flexity light rail vehicles, which were built on the same assembly line as the TTC’s new streetcars.

    A southbound Ion LRV turns from Charles Street to Borden Avenue. Note the white bar signal and the “no right turn – train” sign lit up.

    Funded by all three levels of government, the Ion LRT was constructed and operated by GrandLinq, a public-private partnership (P3) consortium that includes operator Keolis and engineering and construction firms such as Aecon, Kiewit, and Plenary Group. Though design-build-operate P3 models are common for Canadian transit infrastructure projects, they have their challenges, as Waterloo Region would later find out. Fares and service are integrated into the Grand River Transit bus system, which is owned and operated by the regional government.

    Waterloo Region is the smallest urban region in North America with a light rail system, and it works largely because of Kitchener-Waterloo’s geography. Many important regional destinations line up along the corridor: the terminals are both major suburban shopping centres that already functioned as major bus transfer points. In between the two malls are Downtown Kitchener and Uptown Waterloo, the two historic town centres, University of Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University, and Kitchener-Waterloo Hospital. The LRT serves or passes near all these destinations (though Laurier’s campus is centred a few blocks east of the LRT corridor). Furthermore, the region’s master plan focuses urban growth along the LRT corridor with new high-rise residential and mixed-use development. A planned extension of the LRT into Cambridge south to the historic Galt town centre will further support regional urban intensification goals.

    Ion trains operate every 10 minutes during weekday daytime hours; they operate every 15 minutes on weekends and weekday evenings, with 30-minute service from about 10:30 PM to the end of service starting around midnight.

    Map of Waterloo Region’s urban system, which directs growth to existing and planned transit corridors and limits growth outside the cities of Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge. From the regional official plan.

    Despite following a linear corridor, the LRT winds its way along city streets, railway rights-of-way, and hydro corridors. This allowed the region to reduce property and road construction costs as well as achieve higher speeds in specific off-road sections. The fastest section is north of Uptown Waterloo, where the corridor makes use of a freight railway spur line between Kitchener and Elmira that also happens to run directly past University of Waterloo. In the south end, a different railway corridor and a hydro corridor allow trains to reach Fairview Park Mall on a mostly off-street alignment. These off-road segments are protected by railway signals and barriers, like those in along LRT lines in Calgary and Edmonton.

    This ability to switch between different alignment types is a clear advantage of light rail transit for medium-capacity transit systems. During overnight hours, freight trains headed to a plastics plant in Elmira use the same rails north of Uptown Waterloo as the LRT does during the day, making it an example of the “tram-train” model more common in Europe.

    The on-street sections, though slower than the off-road portions, provide access to Downtown Kitchener and Uptown Waterloo, including the planned new transit hub in Downtown Kitchener that will provide a better connection to GO Transit trains to Toronto. Unlike Toronto’s streetcars and Finch West LRT, however, the signal priority system works. On King Street between Downtown and Uptown, there are many intersections with traffic signals, but the LRTs generally do not have to stop at any of those red lights. At intersections, LRVs continue at regular speed, typically 40 km/h through this section.

    A southbound LRV on King Street. It just passed two signals with a clear (white vertical bar) signal; the next signal ahead will soon change to allow the LRV to proceed. Note that there are no “transit signal” signs, as Waterloo Region worked to have these approved by the province.

    Waterloo Region also worked to permit unique transit signals, which feature only white bar aspects. A vertical bar indicates “proceed” while a horizonal bar indicates “stop.” A flashing horizontal bar lets the operator know that it will soon switch to “proceed” while a flashing vertical bar warns of an upcoming stop signal. This reduces the sign clutter that is found on Toronto’s streetcar and light rail corridors.

    A typical Toronto assembly, with red, amber, and green transit signal aspects that look similar to the larger traffic lights above and accompanied with a “transit signal” sign. Of course, the Finch West LRV approached an amber signal, rather than being given a go ahead.

    To be fair, the advantage in Waterloo Region is that most of the on-street sections of the LRV corridor are on narrower urban streets rather than suburban arterials like Finch Avenue. King Street and Charles Street in Kitchener only have two general traffic lanes and are not major throughfares (a provincially-maintained freeway between St. Jacobs, Waterloo, Kitchener, and Highway 401 absorbs much of this traffic). The regional government also widened a section of Weber Street to four lanes to divert traffic from King ahead of LRT construction. This resulted in the loss of about two dozen houses and businesses.

    But by maintaining a narrow right-of-way on King Street, the LRT runs with minimal delays. It is easier to provide aggressive transit signal priority with short pedestrian crossing distances, narrow intersections, and lower traffic volumes.

    The video below illustrates how the LRT runs along King Street northbound from Kitchener Central Station.

    View from the front of a train heading north towards Waterloo

    Despite the LRT working well, it is still far from perfect: there are several sections in which the trams crawl at a 10 or 15 km/h speed, particularly on the south end. At Hayward Avenue the route switches from a railway corridor to an alignment alongside Courtland Avenue; this section has two tight turns and crosses an industrial driveway. Had a few more properties been expropriated (at additional cost) this would not have been an issue. Until a proper protected pedestrian crossing is installed at a path connecting Trayner Avenue to Fairway Road (a critical pedestrian link that was overlooked during the planning phase), LRVs must also slow down along the hydro corridor approaching Fairview Park Mall.

    The P3 contract also limits the ability to make service improvements. In 2024, Waterloo Region proposed revising the LRT schedule to run trains every eight minutes during peak periods, but because of a fixed staffing contract, it would have resulted in 30-minute service after 8PM. Luckily, local transit advocates successfully opposed that change. Had the LRT been operated directly by Grand River Transit, they could have simply trained more operators on the LRT service, even transferring bus drivers to the rail division.

    Overall, however, the LRT works in Waterloo Region both as a transit service and a planning tool. It provides useful lessons on what to do (real signal priority and proper signal aspects, make effective use of on-street and off-street routing where each makes sense), and what not to do (enter strict operating contracts) when building a new transit line. Waterloo Region made its rail transit work for its geography and its needs, and that is the most important thing.

  • The case against transit advertisement wraps

    The case against transit advertisement wraps

    A Go Transit double decker bus completely covered by a vinyl wrap, with the exception of the front windows and entrance door. The wrap advertises the transit agency’s wifi and music streaming gimmick.

    Apart from unscheduled short-turns, lengthy delays, or missed transfers, the thing that bothers me most about riding buses or streetcars is an obstructed view caused by a vinyl advertisement wrap.

    Though transit advertisements have been around almost as long as there have been transit services, these advertisements have generally been limited to posters and cards mounted outside the vehicles, or placed inside, above the windows or beside doors. Advertisements have long been placed inside train and subway stations, and in outdoor transit shelters.

    TTC photograph of streetcar advertising, 1935. The advertisement can be found below the left dash window of the streetcar. City of Toronto Archives Fonds 16, Series 71, Item 11134.

    For advertisers, transit ads provide an ideal vehicle for promoting their goods and services: they can be targeted to specific neighbourhoods that a bus, streetcar, or train passes through; the advertisements move around unlike static billboards, potentially drawing more eyeballs. For transit operators, advertising provides an easy revenue source. Most transit agencies outsource their advertising to larger firms, who are responsible for maintaining accounts and installing and removing ads from vehicles and transit facilities. These companies typically provide an annual payment for the right to advertise on transit vehicles, and at stations and stops.

    A GO Transit coach bus departing Bramalea Station, wrapped for a newspaper’s investment news service; all passenger windows are obscured by the advertising wrap

    Though vinyl decals on transit vehicles are not a new innovation (advertisements in the late 1980s and early 1990s were typically opaque, sometimes covering parts of passenger windows) more recent technology has allowed for perforated vinyl wraps that fully cover windows, while providing an obscured outside view through small dots. While the vehicle is moving, a passenger inside may be able to see where they are, but not be able to read signage or see details. For some, not having a clear view of forward motion can contribute to motion sickness.

    The view from the inside (via Chris Livett, on X/Twitter)

    In TTC subway stations and some GO Transit stations, surfaces such as walls, floors, pillars, faregates and even stairways have also become advertising surfaces, a tactic called “station domination.”

    An example of Pattison Outdoor’s “station domination” advertising, with a traditional ad poster at right, an installed video screen and ad pillar at centre, and stairs covered in ads, at left.

    On occasion, vehicle wraps are used for public relations, rather than advertising. GO Transit and the TTC’s Pride buses are a good example of this. A more shameful example was the TTC’s messaging about fare evasion which took place in late 2019 and early 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic.

    “Forgot to tap” – part of a TTC streetcar wrap used in late 2019 and early 2020

    For the most part, the TTC does not allow ad wraps to completely obscure bus and streetcar windows, but allows up to 70 percent of the passenger windows to be covered, either in a “strip” format (where only the lower parts of the windows are kept uncovered) or “mural” format (where three of five sections of a streetcar are fully covered). Other agencies, like the Hamilton Street Railway, allow for complete vehicle wraps.

    St. Catharines/Niagara Region Transit
    Hamilton Street Railway
    It is difficult to get on a bus in Burlington, Hamilton, Niagara, or Brantford without your view being blocked by a certain real estate agent

    In Waterloo Region, Regional Councillors just considered a motion to increase the number of wrapped Grand River Transit buses and — for the first time — on ION LRT cars. The appendix to the staff report recommending the increased number of advertising wraps depicts a rail car in a Tropicana wrap, with the windows partially obscured.

    Depiction of what an advertising wrap would look like on an ION LRT rail car, from the October 10 agenda of the Regional Municipality of Waterloo Planning and Works Committee

    According to the report, the Region of Waterloo/Grand River Transit has a contract with Pattison Outdoor — one of Canada’s largest advertising firms — that allows for a total of five buses to be wrapped at any one time. GRT and Pattison want to increase this to ten percent of the total bus fleet, which numbers over 250. It also seeks to wrap one ION rail car at a time, with the promise that windows would not be fully covered and convert some static back-lit shelter ads to digital ads.

    Currently, Waterloo Region receives guaranteed revenue from its contract with Pattison, averaging $1,546,500 a year, though the total revenue is projected to reach $1,800,000 for 2023, as ridership increases. Allowing for wraps on 20 more buses and one ION railcar is estimated to net an additional amount up to $500,000.

    It’s worth noting that the report notes a 2018 recommendation against advertising on the exterior of LRT vehicles “due to concerns of diminishing the ION brand.” This restriction was also carried to ION-branded buses that follow the planned LRT extension between Fairway Station and Cambridge. It also notes strong public feedback against covering windows, and proposes to do so, “to maintain the customer experience.”

    The Region of Waterloo’s entire Transit Services budget — including paratransit — for 2023 is $207,203,000, with transit fares bringing $46,143,000 of that – a 22.3% farebox ratio (property tax and provincial grants cover the difference). $2.3 million brought in from all advertising revenue — traditional poster ads and transit wraps — is not an insignificant sum, but it makes up just over 1% of the entire transit operating budget. In Toronto, the TTC’s 12-year, $324-million contract — also with Pattison Outdoor — brings in a total of $27 million a year, or 1.1% of the entire TTC budget.

    At least Waterloo Region staff recognize that transit customers don’t like advertisements that obscure windows. They also acknowledge that transit wraps diminish the transit brand. For a revenue source that represents a mere drop in the bucket, why do transit agencies keep allowing them on their vehicles?