When the rain takes over

For some of us living in a big city when there is a major rain fall, things can be greatly impacted. For us here in Toronto there is a river that runs right beside a highway and when the river overflows the highway gets flooded.  This has happened quite a few times over the years and there doesn’t seem to be a solution on how to manage this situation.

·         When we get lots of rain the river is one of the main places that the rainwater is sent so that means that when there is lots of rain, around 2–3 inches there is going to be an issue.

·         This river is right beside one of the highways (Don Valley Parkway) and the river shores are a little higher than the highway, so you can guess what happens.

So, the results that happen is that the Don River decided to overflow its banks and where does the water go except onto the two roadways that are right beside this river and that means that both of these roads/highways are flooded so that means that there is a major issue.

It got higher after this

On July 16^th, 2024, there was an issue where we saw a lot of rain and as you can probably guess the Don Valley Parkway overflowed and both directions of the highway were closed and there were vehicles stuck because they were caught in all the water. This issue also affected the road on the other side of the river which is Bayview Avenue and that was also closed because of flooding so yes lots of issues that needed to be handled.

This storm that I am talking about impacted a lot of things and with all the rain we got there were also a lot of power outages within Toronto and Toronto Fire had received more than 75% more calls than normal through the day today so that was also something that had to be dealt with. Toronto Fire and Hydro requested that if it wasn’t an emergency to place stop trying to report everything and leave the lines available for emergency issues.

Our transit system (TTC) as also impacted given all the rain and power outages. Some of the vehicles were being diverted and other parts of the transit system just needed to be changed. For our subway system we cannot divert trains, but they can change the starting and stopping of the routes and that is what they did. The system tried their back to maintain service the best that they could and given the amount of rain that we got I am happy with how things were managed.

The flooding of the Don River was only one of the issues that the city had to deal with because there were a lot of other roads that were flooded, which meant people being stranded in their vehicles or the transit system having to divert around the issues. It was a day that a lot of people probably would have wished that they stayed at home today instead of going out and trying to get into the office.

For us, we normally work at home which is good, especially when it rains like it did today. However, when a client has an issue, and you are the closest one to one of their offices, you have to start figuring out how you are going to get to that location. Given all the power outages and flooding it the area of the client site it would have meant a bit of a walk, but thankfully things were resolved remotely, and it meant no trip was required.

So, the water decided to take over the city on the 16^th of July, and it did impact a lot of people, but the water is slowly starting to subside and drain and that means that things should get back to normal before too long or at least we hope that it does. It is now late on the 16^th, and I am checking what has been happening, and I think a lot of the city is getting back to normal and hopefully tomorrow morning everything will be working just fine.

 

Traffic in the city

Living in a big city has it’s advantages and then there are the disadvantages and I think traffic is one of the disadvantages.

For anyone that has to commute to work on a daily basis they really understand how traffic can impact them. It doesn’t matter if you take public transit or you drive to work you are doing to deal with traffic at some point on your commute. It can be as simple as a little bit of congestion on a side street or a main street or the bumper to bumper traffic that you will encounter on one of the highways.

In the big cities sure we have rush hour but now rush hour seems to be getting longer and longer because of the number of people that are commuting to work longer distances. There are times that I wonder when rush hour isn’t in Toronto. In some cases it seems that rush hour even occurs on the weekends especially on the highways. It doesn’t matter when you are on a highway there seems to be a lot of traffic.

For people that don’t know Toronto we have a major highway that at some points is between 12 and 16 lanes wide. Yes, the Highway 401 is that highway here in Toronto that is extremely wide and is one of the main routes along the top of the city for us. It is busy no matter when you are on it and that is because it is the main route from Montreal, Quebec to Windsor, Ontario. It is used by transport trucks as a means of getting across Ontario.

Now traffic isn’t just busy on the highways it can be busy on any of the main streets. Traffic can be impacts by a number of things and more common are accidents and construction. Another thing that impacts traffic is power outages, especially those that impact the traffic signals. When the traffic signals go out it can be a challenge to get around the city and especially through intersections. Some people understand how no traffic signals means an all way stop and then there are the people that figure they have the right of way no matter what. If a traffic signal is out sure you might want to just keep driving but there are other directions that are also trying to get where they are going. In some cases when a street is three lanes in all directions it can be a challenge to get across. It is nice when you can see that directions start taking turns and all the lanes in one direction go at once, one car at a time. Sure, it can mean it is a slower process to get through the intersection in some ways but it is the safest way to do it.

Traffic in a big city can be a disadvantage but when you have a good highway and road system it can work pretty well. Sure, there are going to be times when traffic is extremely heavy but you just have to plan for it and ensure that you give yourself the extra time to get where you are going.