Traffic

Saint John traffic has been driving me bananas lately. Actually, all summer, but we'll get to that later. Let me just mention that I'm from a town of 7 000 people with perhaps 6 lighted intersections (there are two new ones installed recently, but when I lived there it was about 6). I didn't have a car while in university and I'm just now getting used to city driving. Saint John is probably the worst place in the Maritimes to do this because it is an old city and there is no traffic pattern. The roads are basically just old wagon paths that have been widened and paved. The pavement has then been left to rot through and be heaved by the frost until it looks a bit like the surface of the moon. Which makes for a very rough ride and a lot of suspension repairs. And then they start digging them up. Not the heavily cratered ones, but where they need to get to a pipeline or some damn fool thing.

At the end of May, a section of Loch Lomond road in East Saint John was dug up along the westbound side. This not only interfered with a major intersection just down the street from the city's largest shopping centre, but also neatly cut off the fastest way for me to get home each afternoon. Even though the road is not closed completely, the traffic is backed up so badly that it is actually faster to take a detour 4 times as long in distance. That road is, of course, loaded with potholes. There are now areas of pink spray paint on that road which suggests that they are about to patch it. Which it needs, but the work on Loch Lomond is expected to continue until September. That is, both my main route and the detour are both going to be cut off for about 2 months. Roads being a bit sparse on the East end, which is very spread out, I will soon have to take an even longer detour.

This is all before I get tangled up with assholes in spotlessly cleaned full-size extended-cab never-been-used-to-do-work pickup trucks that think the roads belong to them because they drive a large and expensive status symbol. Or the many people that do not use their blinker when making a lane change. Or that run red lights while trying to sneak through on the last possible second of a yellow light (yellow means floor it, even if you're a good 50 feet from the intersection and could easily stop in time and therefore not cut across my nose). Nay, not even the people that stop an inch and a half from my bumper while I'm waiting for the light to change.

In fact, if I did not still owe so much money on my car, I would gladly run some of these people over just to stop them from causing an accident somewhere else.

And so what used to be the last 5 minutes of my 50 minute commute has turned into the last 20 minutes of my 65 minute ride into road rage. Cover your granny's ears if I go past at rush hour, because chances are I'm using each and every one of the 7 words you can't say on TV.