Kitchener-Waterloo LRT making progress
Construction that began in mid-2014 on ION, the premier LRT line for the twin cities of Kitchener and Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, is progressing rapidly, with opening scheduled for fall 2017.
Construction that began in mid-2014 on ION, the premier LRT line for the twin cities of Kitchener and Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, is progressing rapidly, with opening scheduled for fall 2017.
The City of Hamilton, Ontario is close to signing an agreement with Metrolinx, the provincial transit agency, for the building of the city’s first LRT line. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2019, with opening by about 2024. Funding approval by the province of up to C$1 billion (Canadian) was announced by Premier Kathleen Wynne in May 2015.
Tunneling for Toronto’s Eglinton Crosstown LRT project is in the home stretch, with completion scheduled for fourth-quarter 2016.
The Region of Waterloo, which includes the twin cities of Kitchener and Waterloo in Southwestern Ontario, plans to build a $43 million dollar transit center to connect with the city’s new ION LRT line, currently under construction.
Ottawa’s O-Train has grown from an experiment into an expanding system, with state-of-the-art equipment.
The municipally owned Hamilton Street Railway, the bus transit operator in Hamilton, Ontario, is returning to rail operation.
Hamilton, Ont., located at the western end of Lake Ontario some 40 miles beyond Toronto, has received its second GO Transit station, named West Harbour.
The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) has been experiencing significant delivery delays and quality control issues with its 204-unit order of new low-floor LRVs from Bombardier Transportation Canada Inc. The contract, valued at an estimated $C1.2 billion, was awarded to Bombardier in June 2009, with assembly to be completed at its Thunder Bay (Ontario) plant.
Toronto, Canada’s largest city, joined the ranks of those with air-rail links when the 215.5-mile Union Pearson Express train service began public operation on Saturday, June 6, 2015.
Toronto’s venerable Royal York Hotel, built by the Canadian Pacific Railway, was the main setting for the 2015 Global AirRail Conference, held May 20-23, 2015. The hotel’s location was ideal, physically and symbolically, being directly across Front Street from Union Station, a massive Beaux Arts structure dating from the World War I era.