This week, CJAD 800 is looking to help West Islanders figure out the fastest way to get around the latest Turcot closure and get into town.
Three reporters raced into work on Monday morning from the same West Island location — St. Charles and Beaconsfield in Beaconsfield — using three different modes of transportation, to see which one would be able to get to the CJAD 800 studios at the corner of Papineau and René-Lévesque the fastest.
Reporter Emily Campbell hopped in her car, Shuyee Lee tried the bus and Eramelinda Boquer came in by train.
Despite the 20 eastbound ramp to the Ville-Marie east being dropped down to one lane, Emily came in first — in making the trip in 50 minutes.
Negotiating that lane shutdown, however, wasn't easy. The hardest part of the commute, she says, was the approach to the Ville-Marie Expressway, as hundreds of cars suddenly had to merge into a single lane on the ramp.
She says that backed things up for several kilometres.
"It got really heavy around Dorval Ave., and it got super heavy up right up until the exit for the 20 on to the Ville Marie," she says. "I was going from 20 to 5 kilometres an hour on that whole stretch."
Coming in next was Eramelinda on the train. She suggests that many West Islanders heard the news about the lane closure, and decided to take the train in.
She says it was packed.
"It was one of the first trains, it was the 6:50. It was pretty full," she says. "I was told by riders that it was fuller than normal, and I was also informed that the train still can be late sometimes, or not show up, and [one rider] said that probably once everybody figures out how bad that traffic is going to be, that that thing is going to be crushed armpit-to-armpit by the end of the week."
In the end, it took her 59 minutes to get in by a combination of the train, and then the metro from Lucien l'Allier station to Papineau. There was one metro line change to make — and a 10 minute service stoppage on the orange line.
Shuyee came in last, at an hour and 20 minutes, taking the 211 from the corner of St. Charles and Beaconsfield to Lionel-Groulx metro. She spent close to an hour on the 211, which typically meanders through streets — and the occasional detour -- in Pointe Claire, Dorval, Lachine and St. Henri before reaching the metro.
"We went through a detour on Carson, we went through a detour on St. Patrick, and by the time I got to the metro, it was an hour in," she says.
Day two of the CJAD 800 Amazing Construction Race takes place Tuesday. Three CJAD 800 reporters will leave from the corner of Pierrefonds and Sources Blvd. at 7:30 a.m.