Yeah, yeah, it happens every fucking summer, but I’ve got a legitimate gripe here.
Tonight my way home was greatly hindered because every fucking road home I could take was blocked!
The Ville Marie Tunnel: the firefighters decided tonight’s the night to shut it down and practise detecting underground fires (how hard can it be? Follow the fucking smoke!)
Not to mention the 720 highway on the far side of the tunnel is restricted to two out of four lanes because one of the support pillars has huge cracks and can no longer support a significant amount of traffic. I’m probably better off not taking that highway.
So my first alternate route is Rene Levesque Blvd. And lo, what should happen but construction crews are tearing things up and repaving after I get a few kilometres down it.
I cut up to de Maisonneuve, nearly make it to my old alma mater, and bang! More fucking construction – a three lane road down to one lane. And I’m not going to follow a dump truck down the street at midnight. No fucking way.
So I head up one more street to my last option-- Sherbrooke – and more crews are at work.
Umm, hello? Fuckwits at city hall? How the fuck is anyone supposed to get around south of the mountain tonight? You’ve effectively eliminated every single fucking east-west street in the downtown core!!!
And it’s the fucking St. Jean Baptiste long weekend!
I think your road commissioner does the planning here in Lansing too. I was trying to get from my apartment to work. Usually, I can get on Saginaw Highway and just go west the 8 miles, straight shot.
But Saginaw is closed about halfway there. So I turn south on Aurulius (sp?) road. I go down to the next cross street, Jolly, and turn west. About two blocks down Jolly is closed for construction. I am forced to turn north. So now I am heading north on Cedar. Cedar is down to 1 lane instead of 4 due to MORE construction. This allowed me to go across Saginaw Hwy again (still closed, but able to drive across it) to Grand River Hwy. I manage to go west on Grand River, go 3 miles, turn south on Waverly, and get back on the open part of Saginaw Hwy to get to work.
My 12 minute drive to work now takes about 50 minutes. You have to run into FIVE different sets of construction just trying to drive from East Lansing to Lansing! AHHHHH!!
Heh. I remember coming back from a fest in Toronto with you and andy and scott evil, and the highway was backed up, and people were driving through the grass to get off of one road onto another.
I did the driving through the grass trick in South Dakota when a house jackknifed across the I-90 near (I think) Mitchell. A house. In the road. Jackknifed.
Here in Calgary we have construction across all of Glenmore Trail, designed to be the only road that connects one part of the southwest to another without going downtown. It’s been narrowed to one lane at a point prior to the first place you can possibly turn off. Some days it’s faster to drive through Bragg Creek than bother with the nightmare that is traffic in Calgary Southwest.
You’re right, it isn’t Aurulius, it’s Aurelius. Anyway, north of the bridge by Potter Park it’s Clemens St. So you get on Clemens, take it all the way to where it becomes Aurelius, all the way to Jolly, then to Cedar all the way to Saginaw, then Grand River to Waverly to Saginaw. Did you want to be late? If you had gone west on Mt Hope instead of going all the way to Jolly you could have saved 2 miles of N-S driving. Then take Mt. Hope to Cedar, then north and get on I-496. Take I-496 west to either Waverly or Creyts, depending on where you want to be on Saginaw, then north to Saginaw.
Road work in my town has reached an interesting phase: they’re building a major freeway, and the most recent part of the construction required moving a water main that supplied a good percentage of the city’s water. So, despite this being one of the wettest years on record (we’re almost 12 inches above our normal year-to-date rainfall average), the city is under water restrictions. Watering your lawn will get you a $75 ticket.
The really fun part is, the city didn’t mention the disabling of the water main to anyone until the very day they shut it down, which was a Friday. So, for example, people who had new sod installed on Thursday got totally hosed, because they weren’t allowed to water it enough to get it to take root. Businesses that sold new grass were voiding their warranties, and customers took it in the shorts. And those same businesses now can’t sell squat, because no one can water.
Christ, people, it’s a twelve-year-long project; can’t we get a little warning before crap like this?
I probably shouldn’t mention that I took the bus to work today along the Evil Death Highway of Doom (otherwise known as the 401), and it was open, clear, and the fastest trip I ever remember. Almost makes up for all those 8PM inbound traffic jams.
It also almost makes up for the fact that both Stephen Drive and Berry Road are being rebuilt this summer. The bus route in both directions out of my neighbourhood will be snarled.
Last year, they rebuilt Park Lawn Road. And the year before, the other part of Berry Road. It has to stop eventually; they’re going to run out of roads in my neighbourhood. Maybe then they’ll get to fixing Dundas Street between the 427 and the East Mall, which is so rough that it’s shaking vehicles apart.
A friend at the barbecue I went to this weekend was telling us about driving through downtown - there was a sign that said “Lanes reduced” but when he got there, the entire road was closed. Well, technically, “closed” is indeed “reduced.”
When all the construction projects scheduled for Calgary downtown are in full swing, it is basically going to be closed for traffic for over a year (downtown, that is). My husband works with a major construction management company so he knows the extent of the closures, but I bet most Calgarians don’t.
