Valley Line LRT/ Valley Line West | ?m | ?s | City of Edmonton

^ the fence definitely is galvanized steel but does seem to have a whitish sheen to it in some light.
So far the landscaping has been excellent and it will be nice to see how it all fits in with the infrastructure, hopefully all much improved.
 
thommyjo said:
Anyone know what the % complete is? Is there a Q1 update? The new videos, councillor visits, etc makes it feel like it should be done before July. Or are they buying themselves time since it’s so late? Haha
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spent this afternoon walking the line (perks of getting fridays off lol) and yeah, pretty much everything is done, save for some landscaping and sidewalk stuff. they could open to the public tomorrow if they wanted, infrastructure-wise it looked like.
The big red flag I noticed was the testing happening. today it was between Avonmore and Strathearn. with flaggers at every crossing. none of the signals were being heeded by the train. they were shutting down intersections at will and the train was going against the lights. Now, maybe that was just for whatever they are doing today, and the signals work just fine, and they were ignoring them for expediency, but i doubt that.
I think signalling and testing are still in early stages. Beg buttons are everywhere, some don't even work when you push them, traffic signal phases seem off (really long periods with everything red, short greens, long turn lights, etc) and the train isn't even attempting to follow its own signals. I think there's still a couple months of the back-and-forth on sections of the route while lights get programmed ahead of us before any big news.

Also. the trains have horns. Car horns. Loud car horns. not a train horn, or an air horn, a car horn. I got it on video today.
very disappointed by that.
 
cliffapotamus said:
spent this afternoon walking the line (perks of getting fridays off lol) and yeah, pretty much everything is done, save for some landscaping and sidewalk stuff. they could open to the public tomorrow if they wanted, infrastructure-wise it looked like.
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One big thing missing is smart fare equipment: Most stations have vending machines (Avonmore might still be missing one), but none have card scanners yet. You can even see the empty podiums in Sohi's publicity shots. This is big since they're not bothering with putting the old style vending machines in these stops.
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cliffapotamus said:
spent this afternoon walking the line (perks of getting fridays off lol) and yeah, pretty much everything is done, save for some landscaping and sidewalk stuff. they could open to the public tomorrow if they wanted, infrastructure-wise it looked like.
The big red flag I noticed was the testing happening. today it was between Avonmore and Strathearn. with flaggers at every crossing. none of the signals were being heeded by the train. they were shutting down intersections at will and the train was going against the lights. Now, maybe that was just for whatever they are doing today, and the signals work just fine, and they were ignoring them for expediency, but i doubt that.
I think signalling and testing are still in early stages. Beg buttons are everywhere, some don't even work when you push them, traffic signal phases seem off (really long periods with everything red, short greens, long turn lights, etc) and the train isn't even attempting to follow its own signals. I think there's still a couple months of the back-and-forth on sections of the route while lights get programmed ahead of us before any big news.

Also. the trains have horns. Car horns. Loud car horns. not a train horn, or an air horn, a car horn. I got it on video today.
very disappointed by that.
Click to expand...
So a wimpish horn ... fit for a road tram whether on wheels or expensive track.
 
cliffapotamus said:
spent this afternoon walking the line (perks of getting fridays off lol) and yeah, pretty much everything is done, save for some landscaping and sidewalk stuff. they could open to the public tomorrow if they wanted, infrastructure-wise it looked like.
The big red flag I noticed was the testing happening. today it was between Avonmore and Strathearn. with flaggers at every crossing. none of the signals were being heeded by the train. they were shutting down intersections at will and the train was going against the lights. Now, maybe that was just for whatever they are doing today, and the signals work just fine, and they were ignoring them for expediency, but i doubt that.
I think signalling and testing are still in early stages. Beg buttons are everywhere, some don't even work when you push them, traffic signal phases seem off (really long periods with everything red, short greens, long turn lights, etc) and the train isn't even attempting to follow its own signals. I think there's still a couple months of the back-and-forth on sections of the route while lights get programmed ahead of us before any big news.

Also. the trains have horns. Car horns. Loud car horns. not a train horn, or an air horn, a car horn. I got it on video today.
very disappointed by that.
Click to expand...
I was stopped at the light on Connors going down the hill and a train passed coming up just whipping around that bend. It didn't seem like he slowed down for the corner at all. Makes me wonder if they are doing speed testing on various segments of the line, hence the flaggers. There was no way that train would've stopped for a car let alone a person with all the crosswalks there, so all the flaggers are probably required just to be safe for all involved.
 
I also saw the traffic personnel in full force on the SE line. Looks like they were doing a test of the train between 28 Avenue and Whitemud.

The lights by the fire hall at 29 Avenue are fully functional. When a fire truck left the hall on an emergency call, all lights turned red to allow for the fire truck to leave.
 
The_Cat said:
I saw 95.8% complete for Q4 2021
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Its that last 4.2% that seems agonizingly slow, just like my computer virus scan that seems to get stuck at 90 something percent forever.

In general I have been pessimistic about about their meeting deadlines, but I am going to take all that recent testing to be a good sign that the end may be closer than it seems.
 
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