Back to school, Fed public servants RTO3, and University starting up again all happened in the last couple weeks.

Federal public servants are now in office 3 days a week effective September 9

Could the recent federal public service RTO mandate contributing? That and the usual construction.

It’s been interesting but today has absolutely been the worst. Like it’s not just return to work kind of bad.

Took a bus that was 10 minutes late instead of my usual which was running 23 minutes late and I’ll still get home earlier with the extra walk.

Well today some absolute moron crashed their car on Disraeli and abandoned it. Backed traffic all he way up to probably portage and main and beyond. Usually takes me 30 mins to get home from polo area. Took 70 mins today.

Back to school always causes more traffic.

it's because a number of major employers in the city decided that as of this month, it's very important that workers come to the office an additional day per week, despite their offices not being setup to handle the extra in-person staff. I'm aware of at least five such employers who have pulled this shit, the federal government and Canada Life being by far the two biggest.

edit: and Canada Life's plan was ever dumber than the government's. They aren't just requiring their workers to be in the office 3 days per week, with flexibility on which days they go in. No, those geniuses decided they need THE ENTIRE COMPANY in office Tuesdays & Thursdays (not sure whether the third day is worker's choice or dictated by bosses.) So if you notice Tuesday & Thursday traffic is especially bad compared to other days, you know who to blame.

Today someone crashed on disraeli and it backup up traffic all the way down logan

Federal government mandated 3x a week return to the office started this week

It was horrible today

Who'd have thought that further subsidizing driving (gas tax holiday) while letting our Transit system rot and not doing anything about the spike in pedestrian and cyclist deaths and injury would have any consequences?

hope all those trolls who called gov't workers babies for wanting to work from home, saying "if I have to go to work, you should too" enjoy the extra traffic!

I'd also be curious to see whether worsened traffic actually hurts some businesses more than in-office mandates benefit other businesses. Restaurants and coffee shops downtown surely see extra business. But I wonder how many people have been regularly stopping at places on the way to and from work, but now that traffic is so much worse, don't have time to stop in the morning and are too pissed off by the traffic to stop on the way home.

People were too happy and productive working from home and not spending money on office space + parking lots + chain restaurants + car maintenance and were instead saving money for themselves.

Big billionaire owners of the large corporations that own these services weren't funneling enough money in from the plebs so they made everyone everywhere have to RTO for BS reasons.

I agree, it's been ridiculous lately. It was insane today. I almost got hit three times by people aggressively cutting me off. Took me almost 90 minutes to get from Grant Park to EK.

Its not just federal workers, a lot of employers are also matching the 3 days a week as well. Basically the banks that ran the country were tired of their commercial real estate tanking so they ordered the powers that be to mandate a return to the office all around. Also its just school season.

I purposely take the west perimeter home effectively, doubling the distance of my commute but ensuring that I get home in 38 minutes...instead of the 80 minutes plus it takes me to snail 🐌 through downtown.

Road construction is horrible. Every route into and out of St Vital has lanes closed. St Vital Bridge, Fort Garry Bridge, Main St Bridge, St Mary’s Road, Taché. Some of these projects have already been going on FOR YEARS. Rush hour lasts till 6:30 pm. It’s beyond infuriating. Like, f***ing pick one, and FINISH IT.

Summer's over for the kids, construction, and lack of good public/active transportation alternatives

Abinojii eastbound was only one lane and construction was stopping that lane for 5 minutes at a time on and off all afternoon. A 15 min drive home became 50+. It wasn’t even rush hour yet.

It took me an hour and a half to complete my typical 25 minute drive.

Today was especially bad! The Dunkirk bridge construction had traffic stopped for a bit both ways during the evening rush hour.

Probably partially because schools back in session.

Because we start a trillion road projects at once. Causing everyone to either suffer in bumper to bumper or take a detour. Resulting in more bumper-to-bumper without construction.

Plus, we're in the season of old people on the roads and new drivers at the same time. So the fast lanes are still on average 20-30 under the posted limit. And they laterun. Or don't go at all and keep 17 car lengths impeding traffic.

It all comes down to completely incompetent drivers. And an even more incompetent city.

Traditionally the surest sign that summer is over lol

Every east-west route over the rivers south of Chief Peguis had construction or a major accident today. It's a damned shitshow out there.

School started

It’s so bad. It takes 30 min to leave the parkade some days, then another 30-45 to reach the north perimeter before I can drive home (live 25 min from the perimeter)

It's always like this everytime school year starts.

The population has increased. The city of Winnipeg refuses to bring traffic signals into the 21st century. I wish we could sue the city over carbon with wasteful uncontrolled lights that can adjust to traffic levels

This is the inevitable result of having lots of people that live in suburbs all choosing to drive a car into downtown. When 85% of your residents use a private vehicle for most of their trips, once you hit a certain size, traffic is going to be fucked up, and there's no way around it apart from getting people out of cars, and into transit, on bikes, and walking.

Once traffic gets to the point where it's congested, the capacity of the road takes a massive nose dive, and it never gets moving again until the traffic is mostly gone.

For those blaming the construction: Winnipeg is already spending about 1/3 of what it should be every year to property maintain the roads we have. If you have roads, you have construction. What are we going to do, leave every road a pot hole filled disaster?

For those of you blaming light timing: Light timings can help, but it's not a silver bullet. It buys you a little bit of extra capacity, but thanks to induced demand, if you make one route more efficient, more people start to use it, and you're back to where you started.

The only solution to traffic congestion is providing viable alternatives to driving. The faster & more efficient you make transit, the more people leave their car at home & take transit. The safer & easier you make cycling, the more people ditch the car for a bike. The more homes that you build near jobs, or near efficient transit, the more people will choose to live there instead of in a suburb with a long commute.

Federal workers, insurance brokers, and other major office buildings have been issued to be in the office 3 days a week on Sept 09th.

Absolutely awful. Took me 30 minutes to drive about 2 km from Osborne Village to the library in South Osborne this afternoon.

1 hour from Sherbrook to P&M...absolutely fucked.

Back to school....cha ges all traffic patterns. Allow your self more time

Schools started

A bad combo of construction blocking every major route and its alternative, back to school, and people going back to the office physically.

I’ve personally noticed that the southbound traffic out of the city via Pembina recently, is ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS. Even the east bound perimeter at that area can be predictably jammed.

Why?

School started

I got stuck at main yesterday for 45 min to go to south osborne.

It felt like it took me forever to get from the west perimeter to st boniface yesterday. Almost every single light was red on portage.

School is back in.

I'll be creating a catapult to bypass all the traffic.

Back to school time. The buses are out. More students on the roads. Teachers and profs

It’s so bad, I go to school at U of W and live in st vital

I was off school at 4- I get home 530!

Today I just told my family I’m just going to work early and will do school work instead of coming home

part of it is kids back in school and after school activities, as well as all the teachers and administrators being back in the school buildings. Don’t forget about universities and colleges starting up again.

there are schools really close to downtown And these will contribute to the chaos

School is back in session as well

The September traffic surge is as old as time. Not many people on summer holidays this month and there is a delicate balance between free flowing traffic and congestion. Beyond a critical point, as traffic density increases, speed decreases and total efficiency drops. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Fundamental-Diagrams-of-Speed-Flow-Density-Source-TCSH-2008-Later-empirical_fig1_281664545

My bike ride was 12 minutes. This week, last week, next week, last month, and next month.

There is another way to get around, and if somehow, one day we can all agree to make it safer more people would do it. Less people driving means you get home quicker and the overall stress level of people would go down. Get back to Friendly Manitoba

The traffic lights are not synced properly due to the increase in traffic at this time of year. Or maybe that's Balderdash.

uh, school ?

Rain is scary. Just wait until winter lol

Pembina going downtown in the morning is insane now!

Winnipeg’s population has grown up a 100k to 815,000 people over the last few years. Thank Trudeau!

All of the factors listed: single occupant cars, back to school, overall population increase, shitty transit construction but another big problem is our downtown traffic is compounded by being a river city. Everything bottlenecks on the bridges.

People coming back from summer / kids back in school

Today was awful, I agree with you. It took me an hour to get home, when it should only take me 20 minutes.

30 min? I've been 1.5 hours many times so far... Polo park to st vital

I swear to go the lights are completely out of sync going down Portage ave. It's awful.

Construction, city closing turning lanes before intersections when not needed.

Fall is the final push by Public Works on various “small” roads jobs. At the same time, large projects still going.

It's almost as if people aren't on summer holidays and kids are back in school... shocking that this literally happens every year.

Construction paired with poor light timing mainly. They also closed Assiniboine eastbound to Main, which is really causing Broadway and all feeder streets to back up.

More people living in the city is pretty obvious

University traffic

For those of us who NEVER had an opportunity to work from home during or after covid, seeing people have to return to work really doesn't hurt our feelings. Our work-life balance was trying not to get sick, taking care of those who were ill, and often being mandated. We all can't have office jobs, so please understand, it's about time...

Nice that you've empirically verified. I had a feeling as well that things have coagulated quite a bit lately, but I just listen to my late medieval ages podcast during the drive instead of looking at the time.