Search: Type: Posts; User: bcwessel

I would have to believe it's being done largely in response to the popularity of other messenger products, like KIK and WhatsApp.* BBM is arguably the most valuable product BlackBerry owns, and it...

The green portion appears to be City Centre, I believe. Charles Street terminal on the right, and Kitchener City Hall in the bottom left.

Confirmation bias.

The point isn't that the location doesn't hold value, or that it wouldn't be an appealing place to live for some, but that the typologies of the development don't fit the context of the site. For...

And many others. The entire building, less a retail space or two, is pretty-well full.

To provide some supporting context, downtown King Street supports heavy traffic volume throughout the day, and crush volume at rush hours. However, due to its constrained geometries, it's a slow (and...

Cost, vandalism, perceived risk of assault leading to reduced pedestrian access or (now even more) unsafe at-grade crossings, real risk of assault that comes with any confined space with limited...

What would be the particular difficulty in matching an addition to the original structure? Why would creating a successful contrasting structure be any easier, or less offensive if the effort failed?...

The current incarnations of the King Centre and Market Square are far more active than either ever were as shopping malls. If I'm choosing between malls or office space downtown, I'm picking office...

Here's a video walk-through of the building, which also spends some time highlighting this space as a site for potential activity and community engagement. I think it's great news aesthetically, and...

You're basically describing King Street. The renovations to the street shouldn't be thought of as a static project or as being complete. The programming of the place is specifically designed to...

LRT will run along its own dedicated right of way, and cross intersections at-grade in mixed traffic, where it will be given signal priority.

If I'm reading the situation correctly, most aren't saying that transit funding is sacred. Rather, a good deal of the disbelief and outrage stemming from the cuts has to do with from where they were...

Looking at Buffalo's light rail line strictly as a piece of transportation infrastructure, it actually performs very well. I believe it's daily boardings are in the 25000 range, and that it's one of...

Outlet malls in Halton may be a bit beyond the scope of Wonderful Waterloo. As mentioned above, this discussion might be better had over at Urban Toronto or maybe Skyscraper City (if it still exists).

This is a pretty comprehensive list, broken into categories, that should be of some use: http://www.wonderfulwaterloo.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1

If you have any questions about using the site, don't...

You could just as easily call it the Charles Line or Hespler Line, and it would be equally as accurate.

I do. Always.

A majority of residents are in favour of some form of rapid transit, as opposed to the alternative of just an improved standard bus network (the Region's current strategy calls for both). A majority...

The iXpress brand has problems worth fixing before it's extended. For instance:
- the unconventional spelling means that the brand is diminished every time it's incorrectly spelled
- the service...

This is actually part of my point: it's difficult to even begin to evaluate the quality of the branding of any individual line without first determining how that brand fits within a larger network...

In the past, I've promoted a The Rapid/The Local binary branding strategy that I'd like to bump here again, while it's especially relevant.

The Rapid would consist of both LRT and iXPress...

I ate at a Famoso during a trip through Edmonton this summer, and the food was fine. Nothing as special as Bread Heads, but perfectly passable. The fact of it being a dine-in pizza parlour that is...

This isn't appropriate, or productive. There are plenty of places on the internet to insult people, and goad them into fights. This isn't one of them.

Most already call it the LRT. This has the added bonus of letting people know that it's an LRT, and gets away from the completely counterproductive part of the branding that makes the service seem...

Toronto Raptors...

The individual names aside, I think it says a great deal that under "What Are We Branding?," there's no mention of the GRT network. It's unsurprising that a flawed exercise produced such confusing...

Promote away. Unofficially (for now, and I would wager officially within the next couple of years), the reconstruction of King Street is designed to encourage pedestrians to follow their desire lines...

Linear districts are also incredibly easy to service with transit, something that becomes a great deal more difficult in your ideal tic-tac-toe scenario.

In pedestrian terms, I often walk the 1.5...

Why is that? What about places like Arlington, in Washington, DC? It's one of the most successful urban places in that entire region, and it's also completely linear. Closer to home, Bloor in Toronto...

Galt needs more skyscrapers so they can be looked at from the tops of other skyscrapers? I think Galt really needs more people; they generally tend to come after fun stuff. The presence of neither...

It's an interesting way to frame the problem, considering uptown is (still!) a very awkward 4 lanes (non-traditional geometry), whereas downtown is a compact 2 lanes with wide and comfortable...

Perhaps you shouldn't be bringing it up in a public forum if you're not able to tell us who said it, or really any details about what they've actually said. Aside from being incredibly unconvincing,...

A very big part of it is a difference in ideas about what an urban core should be. Roughly a decade ago Kitchener, to it's credit (though also largely as a result of failing to be what uptown still...

Ultimately, the problem lies in building new neighbourhoods that aren't designed to facilitate good transit, which puts the Region/GRT in the undesirable position of being required to run service...

Since you can't build your way out of congestion, people should be complaining about this being one of the most transit-poor corners of the Region instead. The 23 Idlewood, which is expected to...

Rapid transit isn't being built to revitalize the downtowns; it's being built to service core areas (and the rest of the CTC) that are already revitalizing at a pretty incredible rate without rapid...

The discussion was about immediate changes that could be made to the 201 to make it a more useful service along its southern routing while we wait for LRT and the rest of the rapid network to come on...

Speeding and unnecessary lane changing, of course.

It may surprise you to learn that 2-lane bidirectional roads with a centre turning lane carry nearly an equivalent amount of car traffic as 4-lane bidirectional roads, and they do so while also being...

Green light for Manitou widening
Ryan Flanagan | Kitchener Post | 8 November 2012 | LINK

When is the Blockline extension set for completion? In the short term, it could be valuable to extend the 201 all the way to Fairview, which would introduce some of the LRT western bulge alignment...

It's worth taking a look at Kitchener's Mixed-use Corridor Strategy, with specific reference to Fischer-Hallman as far south as Plains Road, to understand how important the southern leg of the 201...

It's worth pointing out that, for people for whom driving is likely to be a more difficult and stressful activity (I've watched my grandparents and recently my mother begin to select low-stress,...

This came oh-so close to having a front door. The fence appears to express the realization (likely an afterthought) that having your backside exposed to the front street is a little unnerving, and so...

From the article, it sounds like most of the work will take place inside. However, it's not inconceivable that Vista understands the street level exterior to be one of the Delta's amenities that...

But what's the point of living densely if you don't get the perks of enjoying a rewarding urban environment, complete with all of its walkable amenities? Not being able to get anywhere without a car...

Further to your point on expertise, the number of recently-installed or expanded systems in North America also provides a great deal of available hardware. The Region's ability to buy-in on Toronto's...

Aside from being "interesting," what do those technologies offer that light rail doesn't (aside from expensive to build and maintain elevated guideways that would have either negatively impacted the...

This is an excellent point, and I think it generalizes extremely well to just about everything the City of Waterloo is doing right now (with a particularly emphasis on student housing, the...