The new ION light-rail line in Kitchener and Waterloo, Ontario

I visited Kitchener and Waterloo last week and rode on the new ION light-rail line there. I also walked along the route for several kilometers.

This line is distinctive in that it’s in a relatively small urban area. According to Statistics Canada, the Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo census metropolitan area had a population of 523,894 in 2016. It’s thus the smallest North American urban area to have a substantial light-rail system.

It’s true that the Kitchener-Waterloo area could be considered to be part of the Toronto metropolitan area, but, officially, it isn’t, and ION in any case is completely separate from the numerous projects being built by Metrolinx, the organization in the Toronto region that manages public transit. In fact, there is a great deal of open space between Kitchener-Waterloo and Toronto. But it’s only something like 100 km between downtown Kitchener and central Toronto, and GO transit has reasonably good service to Kitchener (an hourly bus on weekdays and five trains in the prevailing direction during weekday rush hours). There is also frequent Greyhound service. Kitchener and Waterloo are certainly closely connected to Toronto.

Map of the Toronto region showing urban rail transit lines and the location of Kitchener and Waterloo. I’ve omitted longer-distance VIA lines, including the line to Niagara Falls on which a single daily commuter GO train to Toronto was recently put into service. On the GO (Government of Ontario) lines, only the eastern four-fifths or so of the Lakeshore line has frequent all-day service. But frequency is expected to increase on all the lines in the near future, and they are all supposed to be electrified as well. GIS data are mostly from the Geofabrik version of OpenStreetMap, which I’ve edited quite a lot.

ION is 19 km long—longer than the light-rail lines in several larger urban areas in North America, for example, those in Newark, Buffalo, and Charlotte.¹ It has a rather complicated alignment. There are two stretches where ION follows a railroad right-of-way. It also runs in the middle of certain roads in a lane that’s closed to motor-vehicle traffic. Crossing gates or traffic signals protect these parts of the line. In addition, there are stretches where ION becomes more like a streetcar line, for example through the central business districts of both Kitchener and Waterloo where the tracks occupy curbside lanes that are also used by motor-vehicle traffic. There is signal preemption, although, on all the trips I took, the train did have to stop at a small number of red lights. I asked a driver about this, and he said that the software being used for signal preemption chiefly worked by extending green lights for light-rail cars; it did not turn a red light green.

Map of the Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge area showing ION’s route.

The line is in all the obvious ways a modern light-rail system. The Bombardier Flexity Freedom low-floor cars are quite comfortable. Countdown clocks in the stations tell you when the next train is arriving, and there is also electronic information on coming stops inside the cars. Service levels are reasonable. The headway between trains is basically ten minutes on weekdays from the morning rush hour until early evening and fifteen minutes on weekends and very early in the morning and very late in the evening on weekdays. This is better service at certain times than is provided by certain North American heavy-rail systems, for example, Miami Metrorail and the Cleveland Rapid, but it doesn’t come close to the level of service provided by, say, most of Toronto’s streetcar lines.

ION, which began operations on June 21, reported that there were around 30,000 riders a day during its initial week of service: an impressive figure. But rides were free at the time. I called operator Grand River Transit to see how many passengers had been riding the system in the weeks since fares were implemented—and got hung up on! Grand River Transit hasn’t answered my e-mail either, so this may be a sensitive point.² The hope is that there will be something like 27,000 riders a day. Even if it’s only, say, 15 or 20,000, that would still be more people than ride the longer Shaker Rapid in Cleveland or the Baltimore subway. All the trains I rode had a respectable number of passengers. There were standees but also empty seats. It’s pretty clear that, even aside from ION, the Kitchener-Waterloo area (like some other college towns) has a pretty high level of transit use for a small North American urban area. Its bus system is reported to have 22,000,000 riders a year, around 60,000 a day. This augurs well for ION ridership. It may or may not be relevant that I had trouble paying my fare. The ticketing machine wouldn’t accept either my American credit card or a pristine Canadian five-dollar bill. Fortunately, I had coins. (The fare is 3.25 CAD.) Would the rider count be higher if it were easier to buy a ticket?

Inside an ION train.

In so far as the line works, it will be in part because Kitchener and Waterloo are somewhat distinctive places. North of “uptown” Waterloo, the large and well-regarded University of Waterloo is an obvious source of riders. And both cities have downtowns that looked to be fairly healthy for North American small-city CBDs.

An ION train in downtown Kitchener.

There were quite a few pedestrians on downtown streets when I was there, and there are several newish high-rise apartment buildings in central Kitchener as well as some new or newly renovated office buildings, including one older industrial building being used by Google. (The region has been quite successful in luring high-tech and electronic firms.)

Waiting for an ION train at Central Station, in an area that’s been tagged the “Innovation District.” Note the Google office building in the background.

The two CBDs are tiny, however, only a few blocks long. It’s hard to believe that there’s a congestion problem in either. And, for the moment, neither city has much in the way of population density. The residential areas around both cities’ downtowns consist mostly of very small older houses. Further out in both directions the line takes you quite quickly into low-density suburbia. The two termini are at suburban shopping malls. The corridor through which the line runs does not exactly seem like an obvious place for a rail line.

Kitchener Market station, south of downtown Kitchener. Note the small houses.

I’ve been struck, however, by the fact that the government’s arguments in favor of building the line stress its ability to reshape the region. The presence of ION is expected to encourage dense development, making automobiles unnecessary over a substantial area. There is talk of “reurbanization in the central transit corridor.” In addition, it’s argued that farmland will be saved if suburban development is curbed. Of course, the close relationship between rail transit and dense urban development and a decline in automobile use is not exactly a secret. The Toronto region as a whole (as I described in an earlier post) also has ambitious plans to use rail transit to make many of its suburbs denser and less car-centered. In the United States, officials often do not emphasize rail transit’s potential as a tool for densification for fear of causing a NIMBY reaction. Canada is (as in many other respects) different.

It will of course be many years before it’s known whether rail transit in a smallish urban area can actually bring about a reduction in automobile dependency. In the meantime, the residents of Kitchener and Waterloo have an impressive new light-rail line to ride on.