Thanks to epSos.de for the photo (From Flickr's Creative Commons)
It was bound to happen. When you have a superawesome Father-in-Law who lives in Maple Ridge and you on Main Street in Vancouver, well, sooner or later you’re going to have to live the life of a commuter.
During our 97 kilometer, three-and-a-half hour round-trip, Michelle and I experienced a different kind of community than we usually do – the car commuter community (let’s go with carmmunity or commutermunity). Made up mostly of single-occupancy-vehicles, this community can be simultaneously fast and slow moving. And sometimes, it doesn’t move at all. We definitely experienced a fairly speedy trip out to Maple Ridge, but were stuck in a Port-Mann-Bridge-twinning/Coquitlam-super-sprawl sort of construction-inspired gridlock during which we gazed up and around at the partially built overpasses and expanding lanes of concrete and asphalt.
First question: so, once the six or eight lanes of traffic cross the bridge – and then go into four or five lanes of traffic on the freeway – how will this traffic fit into the two or three lanes of traffic that choke Highway One about three kilometers into/past Coquitlam?
I know a few colleagues who commute each day from Pitt Meadows and Surrey (each from a different place, not from one to the other and then to UBC). And, on Wednesday, Michelle and I got a bit of a window into their worlds. Now. Not only am I on the more social side of the humans are social creatures continuum, but I’m definitely a hypertechnological, superconnected dude, too. I found it hard not to think about sending emails, text messages, and having The Daily Show or a podcast on in the background while I write a blog post and instant message Shipping Correspondent, Godfrey Tait while I read the latest selection of our book club. On a more consistent basis, commutermunities would be a dangerous place for my socially wired, multi-tasking style.
Second question: what the heck does one do alone in a car for three hours (or more) per day?!
Finally, before leaving for Maple Ridge we filled up our 2001 Honda Civic with delicious gasoline. The cost of doing so typically ranges from about $55-$60. Upon returning home and parking our car, Michelle and I noted that the trip used up just under a quarter tank of delicious gasoline – logical extrapolation concludes that, if we lived in Maple Ridge we’d be using about a tank of delicious gasoline per week getting to and from our jobs in Vancity.
Third and final question: in a region where the collective earning potential is about 10-15K less than the Greater Toronto Area and 5-10K less than Calgary and that is also a community that is carbon taxed, property-taxed-to-pay-for-slow-to-expand-public-transit, and is in possession of the highest housing prices in the English-speaking world, how the heck does one keep up with and/or ahead of this rather perplexing mathematical equation?