Years before the Eglinton Crosstown or the Hurontario LRTs open, before the Finch West line even breaks ground, Kitchener-Waterloo residents will be riding their own light rail line, called ION.

The $818 million LRT will connect the region’s bus rapid transit in Cambridge to the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier campuses, a tech hub and major transit nodes.

It is the culmination of four decades of regional planning that set the stage for an intensified corridor rather than the sprawl that plagues so much of southwestern Ontario, says Waterloo Region Rapid Transit director Darshpreet Bhatti.

“We don’t want to be in the position where Mississauga and Toronto are today, where you’ve waited until the growth has occurred and now you’re looking at options to manage that growth,” he said.

Like the Toronto area, Waterloo Region is looking at massive growth, from about 550,000 residents to about 750,000.

“There are positive signs that the growth projections (for ION ridership), if anything, are on the conservative side rather than being too aggressive,” he said.

The numbers are small compared with Toronto. The LRT, scheduled to open in 2017, is expected to attract 53,000 daily riders by 2031 — compared to 65,000 a day on Toronto’s King streetcar. But it's more than double the 25,000 passengers expected in the first year, about the same number that already ride buses on the route.

While the region is investing in light rail it is also spending more than $220 million to bolster its Grand River Transit bus system that will feed ION.

“Right now the region has 5 to 6 per cent of the population that uses transit and it’s growing every year. Our hope is to take that close to 15 to 17 per cent. If we look at it monetarily, that’s the equivalent to saving 500 lane kilometres of roads that we don’t have the real estate today to build,” he said.

That Waterloo made the case and moved ahead doesn’t mean the road to LRT has always been smooth, said former Kitchener mayor Carl Zehr, who governed for 17 years.

There were many municipal and regional votes. There have been rumblings from some that Waterloo should have waited for the 100 per cent provincial funding that Mississauga and Hamilton have been promised for their light rail.

“We would still be in the planning stages. We certainly wouldn’t be in the ground had that been the case — and it may never have gotten in the ground,” he said, adding that younger people in the community were pushing for rapid transit.

Politicians and residents, who wanted the transit cancelled because of the $253 million cost to the region, were comparatively quiet over sewage treatment plant upgrades that cost about $350 million, said Zehr.

Objections to the LRT linger, although most are about the inconvenience of construction. Zehr said residents have recognized the LRT is for future generations — “even though some people call it the white elephant.”

The economic benefits of rapid transit were never in doubt, he added.

“As soon as we made the announcements of where the stations would be, the property started to be picked up, values increased and, today there is a significant amount of property development going on near and around those stops on the LRT,” he said.

At one point Bhatti says he could count 21 construction cranes along the LRT route as developers have embraced the project with new highrise condos and offices springing up along the line.

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“One of the issues with bus transit in North America is it’s not seen as a permanent investment. As a developer if I want to put in $100 million I don’t want to put it along an alignment where that alignment may change. You want to have a permanent fixed feature,” he said.

Unlike the LRT, the region’s bus rapid transit line has failed to attract the projected development.

The nitty-gritty on Waterloo’s LRT

LRT plan

Stage 1 — 19 km LRT with 16 stops to open between Kitchener and Waterloo in late 2017.

Stage 2 — LRT will be extended by 17 km when the Cambridge bus rapid transit (BRT) is converted to LRT. The region is just beginning the provincially mandated assessment process. It hopes to have it complete by 2017. It must also complete a business case to apply for federal and provincial funding.

Bus Rapid Transit

Opened in September, the 6-stop BRT connects the Cambridge transit terminal with the Fairview Park Mall terminal in Kitchener with comfortable “coach style” buses.

What’s in the name?

ION comes from the Greek eimi or go

“An atom, molecule, or group that has lost one or more electrons or gained one or more electrons” — The Canadian Oxford Dictionary

Also part of the word “regION”

Service

Every eight minutes during the morning and afternoon rush and every 10 to 15 minutes the rest of the day. Once ridership matures, it’s likely frequencies will increase to 5-minute service.

A trip between the two terminus points of Conestoga Mall and Fairview Park Mall will take about 40 minutes. The LRT won’t initially shorten the trip much but it is expected to be more reliable because it runs in its own lane separated from traffic.

The vehicles

The light rail vehicles (LRV) are similar to the air-conditioned, low-floor Bombardier models that will furnish Toronto’s Eglinton and Finch LRTs. The LRVs can be joined together in trains. Waterloo officials are keeping an eye on the Bombardier production issues that are affecting delivery times on the TTC’s new low-floor streetcars.