Traffic Sucks

It seems like every time I work in St. John's the traffic gets crazier, and it's not the driver's fault, for the most part, it is the infrastructure. The roads in St. John's were not built to accommodate any sort of growth. Actually its that way in most of Newfoundland, but because most of the growth is happening on the Avalon Peninsula, the problem is compounded in the capital city.

Take for instance the TCH all across the province. There is about 900 kms of highway from East to West and we're lucky if 200 kms of that is actually divided highway. A divided highway is safer and allows traffic to flow more easily because the passing lane is always available, yet most of our highway is missing the passing lane. As someone who travels across the province a lot and is often pressed for time while doing so, having to slow down and go behind a car on the highway who's maximum speed seems to be 80 km/h really blows!

Although in certain cases the two lane divided highway isn't always efficient - i.e. the outer ring road. Traffic in the morning and evening is always slow on it, in both lanes. Some of that is the driver's fault for blocking two lanes with their slow speed rather than one, but some of it is the design of the roadway. There is very little room in which to merge from an exit to the highway, therefore the slow cars in the right lane have to veer into the left lane to allow the people merging to get on the highway, which causes all sorts of traffic jams.

Basically this complaint isn't going anywhere, because it is too late. Not much can be done about existing roadways, but why didn't the Government of Newfoundland take examples from other places that have 3-4 or more lanes on the highways? Most places have carpool lanes and bus lanes (which would be awesome on the outer ring road), but for some reason our roads could not be designed and built this way. Either the people building them had no foresight or faith in population growth in Newfoundland or they were just too cheap or poor at the time to do it. Either way it is a very frustrating experience, especially when you've been to large cities like Miami and Los Angeles who have humongous populations, yet traffic on their freeways seems to flow way better.

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Away From Me - Puddle of Mudd