I have been reading in Truck Magazines where drivers complain about 400 series highways being inundated with potholes to the extent that the highway infrastructure is crumbling. I just drove from Cambridge on the 401, to 416 to Ottawa, 417 to Orleans and return to Brighton via 417, 416 and 401. With the exception of one bridge where the pavement was somewhat shattered on the left lane I never saw a pothole. Conditions were sunny and dry pavement with relatively light traffic. I did however see a number of near misses and some terrible commercial driving incidents to go along with a lot of good solid driving examples to the rest of us.
With the controversy about the 105 km/h speed limit I wondered what are trucks doing out there. Over this same period and distances I gave up counting at well over 800 trucks (two of us in the car) and I would estimate that the large percentage of trucks travelled at 105, 110, 115 and 120 km/h. The majority of them travelled between 105 and 115. It was very rare to come upon a truck averaging 100 km/h.
Lobbyists are fond of saying repeatedly that the delays at the U.S./Canada border is causing havoc with our economy. I have been monitoring the CBSA border delay times web site for a number of weeks and it is extremely rare that there are any significant delays either southbound or northbound from St. Stephen, NB in the east to Huntington, BC in the west. I venture to say that most of the delay problems are caused by carriers who foot dragged in getting onboard with the new programs and left it up until the last minute and then went crying to their Trucking Associations. For example, I just checked the site at 1800 hours March 13, 2008 and there are only a 10 delay northbound and 20 delay southbound at Champlain. (probably due to snow removal) The trucking companies that I am associated with are C-TPAT/FAST and CSA/FAST approved and use ACE and RNS and never experience any problems at the border. I know it is hard to keep up and it costs money for support and sometimes personnel but if we want to run south we have get with the program. In fact, we would be wise to get ahead of the program and be ready at implementation.
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