I’m in the middle of a four-day weekend and on Thursday, I decided to do something new. I’ve been wanting to ride the Eagle Coaster on Cypress Mountain for while, so I finally got off my ass and did it. The Eagle Coaster is nearly 2km long and you drop almost 300m from start to finish.
I’ve been to Cypress Mountain a few times, mostly as a kid but this was the first time I’d driven there myself. I left around 12:30pm and at that time, traffic was very light. Even then, it took me over an hour to drive there, with most of it highway driving. I live super far from Cypress Mountain. I’m basically at the south end of the greater Vancouver area and the mountain is way up north.
The drive up there was uneventful. The coaster ride itself was fun but for something that lasts less than three minutes, paying $35 for a single ride down was hard to swallow. There’s a joke in there somewhere. I definitely think there’s some tourist pricing involved.
Anyways, once I was done with the ride it was about 2:30pm and I hadn’t had lunch yet. It was a beautiful sunny day and there was a patio with a spectacular view of the mountains that served Mexican food. How great would it be to have a burrito and just enjoy the weather and the view? On the other hand, I was cognizant that to get home, I would be driving in the same direction of everyone else in the afternoon rush hour. Also, I needed to cross a bridge for my commute home. My philosophy is that if a bridge is involved in a commute, you’re screwed.
I quickly checked Google Maps and it told me that if I left now, it would take me an hour and twenty-six minutes to get home. The route was dark red kilometres before the bridge and for several kilometres after the bridge as well. Traffic was heavy and congested. There were several icons on the route, which I just assumed were indicating a crash of some sort. It had to be, for traffic to be this bad as early as 2:30pm.
I made the poor decision to drive home immediately because I thought it would just get worse once rush hour actually began. The sooner I got in my car, the sooner I would get home was my thinking.
It was sixteen kilometre drive just to get back onto the highway from the top of the mountain and this drive was traffic free. Once I got back onto the highway though, I drove barely five minutes before I hit traffic. About seven kilometres from the bridge, traffic slowed to a crawl, like less than 20 km/h. It was bumper to bumper traffic, with most of the time, everyone just inching forward a few feet at a time. I kept expecting to see a wreck or emergency vehicles somewhere along the way, which would explain why the traffic was so bad.
I didn’t time how long it took to drive the seven kilometres to get to the bridge but it must have been at least thirty minutes or more. Once I got on the bridge, I realized there weren’t any accidents that was causing any of this. All of this gridlock was just from straight-up massive volumes of vehicles all on the road at the same time, going the same way. It was bonkers.
It was still bumper to bumper traffic even after the bridge, for about three or four kilometres after. Once the highway opened up to four lanes, traffic finally abated enough that I was able to speed up beyond 50 km/h for the first time since I left the mountain and merged onto the highway. The rest of my drive home was uneventful finally. All told, it took me about an hour and forty-five minutes to get home. Nearly double the time it took to get to the mountain.
I wasn’t sure if that drive was just anomaly or if this was a daily occurrence. So today, at around 2:30pm, I checked Google Maps again. I plugged in the route from Cypress Mountain to my home and the estimate was again, almost identical to what it was the day before. I checked the route and there were no accidents, just a ridiculous amount of traffic volume.
A long time ago, when I was a much younger man, near the turn of the century, I worked in North Vancouver, where the commute home was similar to the route I drove yesterday. I would drive home every day around 5:30pm or so, which I would say is in the rush hour and I didn’t experience anything like I did yesterday. Traffic is much worse now.
I know a lot of people who live on the North Shore, they love the proximity to nature and the mountains but that bridge exacts a toll. Not a monetary one but one that you pay with your patience and sanity. I’ve always had the opinion that having to cross a bridge for any commute just adds headaches and stress to your life. Some people drive this commute every day. How do they do it?
I’ve always had an appreciation for the fact that I get to work from home but that drive the other day, just reinforced that.