The top-line figure: gridlock costs the nine largest urban centres in Canada $3.7 billion per year. In March, federal Transportation Minister Lawrence Cannon released the first comprehensive attempt to put a price tag on congestion in Canada. So how much is traffic congestion really costing us? And what can we do about it? Across Canada, congestion is acting like a slow-drip torture on the economy, gradually sapping its productivity. Every large city in the country is feeling it. And it's not just Vancouver being crippled by traffic.
#Road to nowhere message board driver
Today, an Argus driver can deliver only half the number of packages he could 20 years ago. Also like the weather, it seems to be getting worse. Like the weather, everyone has a personal story of hardship. Like the Canadian weather, it's a subject of eternal complaint. I can only give my parcel guys maybe 18 to 20 calls in a morning,” he complains.
And those routes don't seem like so much fun anymore. Today, Goodrich isn't doing the driving himself. My goal was to average 15 stops an hour, and I could fly around town. I could do 45 to 50 deliveries in a morning. “We are always under the gun because of traffic.” Goodrich can cast his mind back to a happier time, when it was him in the truck: “Back in the mid-1980s, I was doing parcel deliveries in Richmond for Argus. every night?we've got a schedule to meet in Seattle,” Goodrich frets, in the way bosses do. “Those radiators have to make it to the U.S. Such is not the case for Argus's operations manager, Brent Goodrich. But on most days, it takes an hour or two.ĭias, who is paid an hourly wage, appears to have achieved an appropriately Zen-like attitude toward his daily period of enforced contemplation. “In fact, I'm shocked when there is no lineup.” On rare congestion-free days, he can make the trip back to the office in half an hour. “You are pretty much guaranteed to come to a complete stop,” says Dias, whose daily route takes him from Burnaby to Chilliwack and back, hauling radiators from the manufacturer to his employer, Argus Carriers Ltd., for reshipment to the United States. According to the provincial government, Port Mann Bridge is congested nearly 14 hours per day.
This funnelling effect, combined with the sheer volume of vehicles moving around Greater Vancouver, produces lineups of three kilometres or more every day. Heading west toward the coast, Port Mann squeezes four lanes of traffic into two. There's no point getting frustrated because it's always like this.”
Sometimes I just sit and think,” Dias says of the endless hours he spends every week sitting in his cab. “I'm on the phone to my girlfriend, maybe I'll read the paper. For truck driver Carlos Dias, the trip across Port Mann Bridge, spanning the Fraser River, is his quiet time.
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