Traffic congestion: Metro Vancouver second worst in North America for local travel

[AW607]

Originally Posted by The Province

Vancouver may no longer be eligible for inclusion among the world's top 10 best places to live. But it can claim one distinction: It has the worst traffic congestion in Canada — and the second worst in North America, with only car-mad Los Angeles leaving it in its rear mirror.


Thick traffic moves along Highway 1 over the Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Bridge on Tuesday, July 10. Roads in and around Vancouver are now more clogged than those of Miami, Seattle, Tampa, San Francisco, Washington, Houston, Toronto and Ottawa.
Photograph by: Ric Ernst , PNG

Despite, or because of, the constant push for better transit and more biking, the roads in and around Vancouver are now more clogged than those of Miami, Seattle, Tampa, San Francisco, Washington, Houston, Toronto and Ottawa, the other top 10 contenders for the title of North America's most traffic-congested city.

At least that's according to a survey by auto global-positioning-system provider TomTom, which found the most bottlenecked road times in Vancouver were Tuesday evenings and Wednesdays mornings (perhaps, I'm thinking, because they follow our long, lazy weekends).

Amsterdam-headquartered TomTom claims its new index is the world's most accurate barometer of urban traffic overcrowding, because it's the only one based on real-time travel data along the whole road network of select cities, including their local and arterial roads and highways.

Its congestion index (tomtom.com/congestionindex) compares travel times during non-congested periods with those in peak hours.

Average trip times in Vancouver, for example, take 30 per cent longer than when traffic in the city is flowing freely — and 65 per cent longer during evening rush hour. Those in L.A. take 33 per cent longer overall and 77 per cent during the evening peak.

(The area that TomTom said it surveyed does not include the whole of Metro Vancouver. It covers a much smaller core area that includes the City of Vancouver, the University of B.C., Burnaby, Richmond, much of the North Shore, Belcarra and New Westminster and a small portion of Delta.)

Vancouver-area realtor Monique Rook, who drives more than 30,000 kilometres a year for her work, stressed Tuesday that the traffic system in our region is simply not efficient.

"It's kind of sad that a world-class city cannot get it together.." she told me.

However, veteran Vancouver cabbie Reza Hashemi wasn't shocked by the survey's findings.

"It doesn't surprise me, because Vancouver is growing very fast."

Gordon Price, director of Simon Fraser University's city program, suggests that the geography of Vancouver may be a factor.

"But then, San Francisco has more or less the same conditions we do."

Price said the basic reason why North American cities such as Vancouver have become congested is because people still rely too heavily on cars.

"The thing is, they don't have a lot of choice," he added.

Price said the new Port Mann Bridge, which is to open next year, may cut congestion for a while. So may the South Fraser Perimeter Road and other road improvements in the area.

"But it just locks people into car dependence, and overall traffic congestion will just get worse again over time," he said.

In other words, we may well soon find ourselves playing congestion catch-up again.

The former Vancouver city councillor cited a city engineering report showing the amount of traffic coming in and out of downtown Vancouver hasn't changed much since 1965, despite a doubling of employment and population.

That was, he said, because the downtown now offered various transportation choices.

"And what I think the TomTom survey reflects is what's happening in the part of the region that doesn't [have those choices]."

U.S. public policy consultant Wendell Cox, however, said the push by Canadian authorities to get people out of cars and onto public transit will not reduce travel times because, for the average work trip, transit takes considerably longer.

Cox added that bicycles were not a feasible alternative.

"I mean the bicycle is fine. It's fine for college professors. It's fine for a very small niche, just like smoking a pipe is fine for a very small niche," he said. "It is not an answer for everyone."

Without proper arterial roads, he predicted in an interview Tuesday, the Vancouver-area traffic gridlock will only get worse.

Myself, I agree with Price that further transportation choice is needed.

But I also agree with Cox that, since the vast majority of daily trips in our region are made by car, we need to start focusing far more on improving our roads — before we all grind to a standstill.

Read more: Traffic congestion: Metro Vancouver second worst in North America for local travel

I don't know about you guys, but it's another reason why I find that most often the best way to get downtown is by taking public transit

[Energy]

Compared to traffic in Asia what we have here is nothing.

[murd0c]

Originally Posted by Energy

Compared to traffic in Asia what we have here is nothing.

Look how many people are in Asia compared to us. Look all the other cities as well. It's a fricken joke and even more of a joke they are going to be making us pay for better transit with tolls.

[dachinesedude]

wonder how many cities tomtom monitored, cuz i find even seattle have worst traffic jams then here

here its just dumb accidents/stalls that clog up everything

[Glove]

its getting very noticeable these days,

i've started to hate driving because I cant go anywhere without sitting in an hour of traffic, no matter what day, or what time of day.

it can be fuckin 8 pm on a tuesday night and I cant even cross into surrey without getting raped at every bridge.

Less and less do I ever leave coquitlam for anything

[Harvey Specter]

What do you expect when we have 2 lane highways and bike lanes everywhere?

For example, look at the Knight St bridge, seriously how long will the bridge last with only 2 lanes? Our transportation infrastructure was built based on the population in the 70's and 80's and the planners never envisioned future population growth. In the states they did and built freeways, we built roadways.

[bobbinka]

Originally Posted by dachinesedude

here its just dumb accidents/stalls that clog up everything

THIS.

oh look, someone got pulled over on the OPPOSITE side of the highway... lets all hit our brakes, slow down to 50, and take a look

someone's trying to merge onto the highway? lets slam on our brakes and hold up everyone else behind us so that the poor fellow can slowly merge in.

[JKam]

Toronto's highways are worse than ours by far, I think. Literally traffic ALL day as opposed to our 3pm-8pm traffic jam.

[yray]

TomTom? I think google traffic has better data...

[Tapioca]

The bike lanes are very visible and arguably a political statement, but it's almost laughable to think that they a primary cause of traffic congestion here. Traffic flows downtown have actually steadily declined over the last 2 decades and besides, most of the people who complain about traffic never go downtown for work. People continually raise the bike lanes as a lead cause for everything wrong in this city because they are a challenge to deeply embedded values.

However, there's no denying that traffic flows are bad between suburbs. Well, the province is working on 2 huge projects - the Port Mann and the south Fraser perimeter road. But realistically, what else can the province do? Expropriate more land to build more highways? Get rid of the ALR? With anything, if you build it, they will come... Whether that's more roads, or more rail transit, or more bike lanes (contrary to people's opinions.)

[StutteR_]

Another reason why we probably made the list is because we do not have a central highway. In looking at some cities around North America, most of them have one highway that connects different areas.

[TRDood]

Originally Posted by Tapioca

The bike lanes are very visible and arguably a political statement, but it's almost laughable to think that they a primary cause of traffic congestion here. Traffic flows downtown have actually steadily declined over the last 2 decades and besides, most of the people who complain about traffic never go downtown for work. People continually raise the bike lanes as a lead cause for everything wrong in this city because they are a challenge to deeply embedded values.

However, there's no denying that traffic flows are bad between suburbs. Well, the province is working on 2 huge projects - the Port Mann and the south Fraser perimeter road. But realistically, what else can the province do? Expropriate more land to build more highways? Get rid of the ALR? With anything, if you build it, they will come... Whether that's more roads, or more rail transit, or more bike lanes (contrary to people's opinions.)

Damn bike lanes.

I work downtown, and have to carefully pick my streets depending on morning/evening traffic flow.

[Ronin]

Vancouver isn't THAT bad.

I drove through Seattle a couple weeks ago and was blown away that there was a jam heading out of the city toward Vancouver at 2pm on a Thursday.

New York is terrible. LA is too. I never really go to Surrey but between Richmond, Burnaby and downtown, I'm never really stuck in traffic that long.

[drunkrussian]

this is surprising. i nothing else new york also comes to mind as possibly worse than us? this survey sounds like bullshit

[mmmk]

yup, it's BS to me too

[AzNightmare]

49th street is probably the most congested street of all time in Vancouver.
Absolutely ridiculous.

[MrGoodbar]

Georgia and burrard in downtown vancouver is fucking ridiculous. Pedestrians don't give a fuck about lights.

[Harvey Specter]

Originally Posted by JKam

Toronto's highways are worse than ours by far, I think. Literally traffic ALL day as opposed to our 3pm-8pm traffic jam.

And can't forget the massive potholes and crazy dips in the road. The highways in Toronto are beyond awful.

[GLOW]

no problem. we'll just put in some bike lanes downtown, that'll clear up all the congestion...oh wait...nm




i'm actually surprised we beat toronto. i visited my friend once and we were going to leave downtown during rush hour....i look down the road and was like

took a detour to kill a couple of hours before heading out...

[- kT]

i wouldn't be so quick to call bullshit. just take a look at every single one of our major routes around 8-9am and again around 4-5pm, when people are going home. knight st, hwy 91, hwy 99, oak st, granville st are all ridiculous. and the list goes on too

[dahonga]

Originally Posted by JKam

Toronto's highways are worse than ours by far, I think. Literally traffic ALL day as opposed to our 3pm-8pm traffic jam.

Originally Posted by Jah Dean

And can't forget the massive potholes and crazy dips in the road. The highways in Toronto are beyond awful.

Toronto highways at least go 4-8 lanes across depending if you are on the 401 or DVP.
They're maintained fairly well enough to not have any huge potholes on the highway, the roads are a different story, especially downtown.
Traffic in Toronto normally dies down after 7-8 pm ish.

Vancouver highway you can probably drive faster on the regular roads some times.

[Harvey Specter]

I like the 407, whenever i go down for work I usually use it and surprisingly the Gardiner expressway flows pretty well during rush hour, only gets jammed before you hit downtown.

[bobbinka]

well, it seems they're doing the ranking in terms of how long the travel time is in comparison to normal travel time, which might explain why we are ranked so high.

my speculation is that the other cities that you guys suggest have more traffic (and should be ranked higher) probably have suburbs that are much further apart than ours, meaning the travel distance and normal travel time in free flow traffic would be greater. a 30 minute traffic delay for us would increase our average travel time by a larger percentage than someone who normally takes longer to get between suburbs.

i.e. 30 minute delay on top of a trip that is normally 30 minutes vs a 30 minute delay on top of a trip that is normally 40 minutes.

[iEatClams]

Anybody that lives in Surrey and the North Shore can attest how bad traffic is here. Ever try to get into North Van from downtown and trying to go through stanley park? Or go from the northshore to downtown during a saturday afternoon?

Don't even get me started on Surrey, I had to take Port Mann/ Alex Fraser for work for two years and it by far is the worst traffic I've ever been apart of on a daily basis, and if accidents happen it's game over.

[Jayboogz]

There arnt enough bike lanes We need to close more lanes for cycling!