Enjoying your morning commute? How about driving home after work?
No? Then you are not alone.
Surrey’s roads are laced with construction, lane-mergers, orange pylons… if you’re looking for job security, being a flag person has got to be a good route to go.
These days, if you are lucky enough to be gainfully employed and to have several viable routes to chose from in your commute to and from work – or wherever you are going – you are pretty much guaranteed to run into construction whichever way you go.
There was a time when Surrey residents would wax thankful about not having to cross a bridge to get to work in their home city, and pity those who have to drive in to Burnaby, or worse, Vancouver.
See also: Surrey’s potholes are driving plenty of people potty
While that still constitutes a white-knuckle-clenching commute, navigating Surrey’s traffic gridlock has become an increasingly harrying and adrenalin-spiking task. Whether traversing the main stretches of King George Boulevard, 152 Street, or 32 Avenue, or sharing the roads on what have become commuter routes linking Surrey with neighbouring communities, the feeling is the same for most drivers,
Coupled with viral construction work in this city is the infestation of large trucks on local streets, both major and minor.
There was a time, and not too long ago, when our political leaders extolled the virtues of the South Fraser Perimeter Road as a panacea to our truck traffic congestion woes.
Well, it clearly wasn’t.
Dump trucks and semi-trailers should not be wending their ways through school zones, or otherwise plugging up residential streets.
Moreover, our political leaders should apparently be more attuned to the taxpayers’ reasonable expectation not to be stuck in perpetual gridlock on our residential streets. And, as has been stated all too often on this page and the one facing, not everyone can take public transit to and from work.
Many of us have no other option but to drive, and those that must should not be condemned to weather what has become Surrey’s daily perfect traffic storm.