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Traffic jam

It's the talk of the town. Everyone felt their blood pressure go through the roof while driving to and from work this week.

It's the talk of the town. Everyone felt their blood pressure go through the roof while driving to and from work this week.

Attempting to navigate through the ridiculously mismanaged road construction happening simultaneously along Highway 99 and Government Road can only be described as an exercise in futility.

Municipal traffic control personnel looked more like keystone cops as they manically directed northbound drivers heading toward the North Yards off Queens Way and onto Pioneer Way. Once off the main road, drivers had to have ESP to figure out that what appeared to be a driveway was actually the shortcut back to the North Yards. You see there was no hint of flaggers or signs pointing the way.

To add to the frustration, at the same time, Highway 99 construction north of the Mamquam River bridge backed traffic up, but did so just far enough that drivers were unaware of the problem until they were past the last escape route - that would be left at the Wal Mart.

So what was the alternative after sitting in traffic for 20 minutes only to have crawled 100 metres with nothing but red taillights ahead? Several vehicles decided to make a quick - and illegal - lefthand turn at Centennial Way, jumping onto Government Road.

While there's no excuse for this maneuver - especially given that the southbound traffic is not visible over the rise until the very last second -the dangerous driving is in part attributable to the entirely inexcusable mess of a traffic jam caused by road construction at peak travel times.

And there's no doubt more than a few schoolchildren learned new curse words as parents picked them up since all of this was happening during primetime "rush" hour, if you can call any Ó£ÌÒÊÓƵtraffic rushed.

Their timing is the most confounding part of the roadwork plan: why oh why can the handful of workers not stop their machinery for those few hours in the afternoon when Ó£ÌÒÊÓƵsees increased traffic?

And they wonder why drivers get so angry.

The morning is hardly better as construction crews seem to decide willy nilly when the southbound Highway 99 turn off to Cleveland Avenue will be accessible. One morning, right-turning vehicles are forced to line-up awaiting a change in traffic lights to make a shard turn onto Cleveland, other days they can fly through the turn off. And it's rarely clear what the difference was from one day to the next.

Traffic control personnel have a very challenging job, there's no question. For their sake and for the sake of drivers we implore roadwork contractors: have some consideration for drivers, get some better traffic management out on the roads.

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