When you’re sitting in traffic, it’s important to have some scenery to look at. It gives you a distraction from every moment of your life that’s slipping by. I think the view from the 40 right before it merges with the 15 southbound is something special. Nowhere else in the city can you get a look of our city’s largest green space as the mere backdrop to sprawling urban decay.
I have a vague recollection in the early-mid nineties of there being a story in the Gazette about a German road safety specialist touring Montreal, and he thought that that spot where the 40, Decarie, and Marcel Laurin merge was one of the most dangerous things he’d ever seen. Mind you, as an adolescent at the time, I was prone to exaggeration, so who knows how it actually went down.
I also recall something about how the Decarie Expressway being obsolete by the time it was finished being built. That came word-of-mouth, but I’m inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt, because I spend so much f**king time in traffic right around there. If you don’t believe me, check out footage of my commute a couple weeks back.
In any case, scenery like this helps the time drag by less painfully. It reminds you that, no matter how shitting of a time you’re having, there’s a hoard of fellow citizens who share your misery.
CT Moore also blogs about search engine marketing and maintains a new media vlog.