2007-12-17

Insane MF'n Montréal Traffic

StartDestinationkmstime
GloucesterNepean1825 mins
NepeanVerdun225135 mins
VerdunVaudreuil45120 mins< OMG!WTF!!
VaudreuilGloucester15080 mins

I agreed to do a friend a favour today - her father had been admitted to hospital over the stormy weekend, in Montréal, and she needed to get there. So we took off shortly after 13:00 with everything.

The drive down was fine. One lane was a little bit snowy in parts, but that's about it.

After I dropped her off, I was rolling again by 15:30. And, holy shit, I will never complain about traffic in Ottawa again. It took me over half an hour to get from Verdun up the autoroute Décarie to autoroute 40. That's a 10 km highway drive. It then took me another goddamned hour and a half to get to Vaudreuil, which seemed to be the magic point where half the cars simply disappeared and the traffic flow changed from complete stops for 5 or 6 minutes, to accelerating right up to 90 km/h. I mean, I commute from Gloucester to Nepean (and vice versa) every day in Ottawa, through downtown, at rush hour, and my travel time rarely even doubles! Hell, I lived in Toronto for a year, and I never had a 45km drive take me 2 hours. At times I was alternating between, eyeing the full-size shoulder wondering what the fine for using it might be, and ready to snap and just bash my way up between two lanes.

If I ever move to Montréal, I must have property near my place of employment.

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