What the Heck Happened to Brampton?

I happened to be at the corner of Islington and Rutherford Road the other day, scouting a location for the photo shoot for the cover of the 2012 Kenzie Car Calendar in support of Smartrisk.

It was about 3:30 in the afternoon, and rush hour ("hour"-singular, hahahahaha...) had already started.

So I figured heading south to the 401 then going west to get to Halton Hills would be pointless.

Instead, I’d just skip across Rutherford, which becomes Bovaird, which becomes “old” Highway 7, which becomes regular Highway 7, into Norval, Georgetown and home.

Maybe pick up some ‘peaches and cream’ at Allison’s, God’s Own Corn Patch, on the way.

A nice little drive in the country at the end of the day.

Hah!

Where the heck did everybody come from?

And where the heck were they all going?

Rutherford is three lanes in each direction between - oh, maybe Martin Grove and Hurontario (old Highway 10 - why do they keep changing the darned road names?...).

And they were all jammed, bumper-to-bumper, stop-and-go.

There must have been a crash or something. Surely, this wasn't normal.

A woman in the car in the adjacent lane had her passenger-side window down.

“Is it always like this?” I asked her.

“Every day!” she replied.

Yikes.

It continued like this until well past Hurontario.

Yes, there was some construction at this intersection - seemingly, only on the right-turn lane heading north (idiotically, they were not converting it into a roundabout - what is WRONG with these people??...)

So that shouldn't have been an issue.

Is the GTA just growing that fast?

I guess so...

Comments

[Meredith]

An excellent example of why we need MUCH better and more public transit in the GTA, so that people who really do need to be driving vehicles can actually move, and the rest can commute from home to work and back en mass. Using cars to transport just one person is an extremely inefficient use of these large vehicles. Unfortunately, developers keep designing sub-divisions to be built around cars, instead of people, so that walking/biking/accessing transit is very difficult and/or unpleasant. This is not unique to Brampton - it's all over the GTA. You should see Dupont Street in the mornings, now that school is back in session - I beat the bus AND every car on my bike every morning!

[sjk]

I've been commuting from Cambridge to Brampton for over a dozen years now. Biggest frustration has always been the "Brampton" part of the drive. With all the development in the Northwest it will only get worse. (Which really causes me to smirk at all those "Say no to the GTA West corridor signs near your neck of the woods", the traffics gotta go somewhere.)

Best option Westbound is use side streets to skip south of Queen to McMurchy (not McLaughlin, the right turn is deadly), North to Queen, West to Mississauga Road and then South ot Embelton. Head North to 10 Sideroad as soon as you can and skip along the south side of Georgetown.

Couple of coworkers like Kennedy north to Mayfield and then shortcut through Glen Williams to catch 7 on the NW side of Georgetown. I think they're nuts....