Tunnel: the plot thickens
TVA says the tunnel situation got worse Wednesday.
TVA also sent a journalist out Tuesday afternoon rush hour to check out the public transit option concluding that a trip that normally takes 20 minutes in a car had taken him an hour and a half. I think “normally” has to be considered here.
mare 12:03 on 2022-11-02 Permalink
Had to fact-check and he’s right: according to Google Maps it indeed takes only 20 minutes to get from the TVA studio to Promenades St-Bruno. Now, at 11h45, outside rush hour, without any traffic on the bridge.
During a normal rush hour the bridge and all the streets that lead to it, like Papineau, Ontario, Sherbrooke, Rachel and De Maisonneuve are jam-packed and it takes at least 20 minutes just to get *on* the bridge. It also certainly helps when your employer has its offices on one of the access roads to the bridge and presumably a subterranean parking garage for free. Otherwise you have to count walking to a parking lot and driving off it with all the other cars that want to leave at 17h15.
On the way to work in the morning (if you work regular 9 to 5 hours, which many journalists don’t) it’s probably also no easy sailing on either end of the bridge. But you don’t have to stand in line to buy a metro ticket, something commuters apparently do every day. (Finding parking doesn’t cost any time.)
I wouldn’t expect anything else from a TV station whose income consist for a large part on adverts for cars, and whose audience lives in places were there is hardly any public transport.
Blork 13:41 on 2022-11-02 Permalink
No surprise it got worse today, as I think a lot of people were holding off for a few days to assess, and when it didn’t seem so bad they all jumped back on the bandwagon.
That said, let’s put things in perspective here. In-bound, there’s only a one-lane reduction over the “normal” pattern. Instead of three lanes in the tunnel there are two. That’s not a drastic change, although it has the capability to turn nasty very quickly if there’s a stall or a breakdown that closes one or both of those tunnel lanes.
Outbound it’s worse, as it’s gone down from three lanes to one, with a higher probability of nastiness from a breakdown because there’s only one lane to start with.
That said, I know of people who still drive — similar to the TVA to St-Bruno run discussed above — but they do it later in the morning (9:30 or so, and returning at 6:30 or 7:00) and apparently they’ve not seen any big change. So it’s not like a 24/7 “nightmare.” Although we’re only three days in, with roughly 1000 more to go.
dhomas 18:13 on 2022-11-02 Permalink
It was most definitely much worse today. The traffic at around 8h spilled over onto the 40 West, the service road of the 40, and even the 25 North of the 40, strangely. Basically, it’s spreading. I’ve been avoiding the 25 South and going over an overpass west of the 25 to get to my home just west of the 25, but today even that was difficult.