Decision time for how to extend ION to Cambridge

Ahead of Tuesday’s Regional committee meeting, the staff report on the ION initial business case is out, and it recommends an ION light rail extension all the way to downtown Cambridge! The Region of Waterloo standing committee for Sustainability, Infrastructure, and Development will meet at 150 Frederick on Tuesday, November 4 at 9 am. It will hear presentations from members of the public and will consider the staff recommendation on ION. The committee is composed of all of Regional Council, but procedurally, anything they adopt will need final approval by Regional Council itself on Wednesday, November 19, at 7pm.

The staff report

You can read media coverage of the staff report, though the report and initial business case are not very long if you would like to read them yourself.

Of the 2500 people who filled out the Region’s EngageWR survey, an overwhelming majority was in favour of the full length extension using light rail, as opposed to shorter routes or switching to Bus Rapid Transit. In representative public polling, they found a majority of the public strongly supports ION stage 2, and light rail has much more support than bus rapid transit does.

In the staff analysis, the shortened light rail options don’t score well on the economic case nor the strategic one. Full BRT comes out with a lower cost but also lower benefits, while full LRT is better aligned strategically with the Region’s priorities.

One detail worth noting is the report indicates 29 minutes as the travel time from Fairway to Downtown Cambridge stations. At an average 34 km/h, this is quite a bit faster than ION stage 1 – and faster than the Bloor-Danforth subway for that matter – and likely owes to the larger portion of the route that’s off-street. It will be roughly on par with driving, and an improvement over the current ION 302 bus. ION light rail will have an added stop in Preston but still shave several minutes over the current off-peak bus running time, and will be 12 minutes faster over current rush hour bus schedules.

Costs and funding

The staff recommendation is for the Region to seek full funding from the upper level governments for development and implementation.

There is not much new on costs in the report, which has $3.1b in 2025 dollars as the estimate for capital costs for the full light rail option. It does, however, indicate that this is a figure from cost consultants based on 5-10% design and that it is “consistent with the capital costs for other recent and current LRT projects in Ontario”. We think the Region could learn from our own Stage 1 to get more transit built for this amount of funding – but we should still ask for that funding.

What you can do

We have a shareable page of actions people can take, but a few things you can do:

• Send a message directly to Regional Councillors. You can make it short and sweet and share why you would like them to support the full light rail ION extension.
• If you can, show up at the committee meeting on November 4 and the council meeting on November 17. We’ll be there with IONizeWR buttons!

P.S. We have partnered with Bearface Design for a new look for IONizeWR! Would you get an IONizeWR shirt or other merch? Let us know so we can gauge interest.