Vancouver traffic

Looking for advice on Vancouver traffic on a weekday. Next Monday (24th) we are arriving by cruise ship, renting a car and driving down to Seattle. We don't plan to do any sightseeing in Vancouver this time around. Is traffic normally pretty bad heading from Canada Place south towards the US Border on a weekday morning? Are there any major roads to avoid? I'd rather not get stuck in lots of traffic, if we can help it. Thank you!

Traffic usually thins around 9am. I recommend enjoying your cruise breakfast and try to be last off the ship.

You can confirm the situation checking the Google Traffic link here...

https://www.google.ca/maps/@49.1532985,-122.9864052,11z/data=!5m1!1e1

When you are driving to the border, tune into to News1130 (1130 on the AM dial) for traffic reports/border wait times every ten minutes. Chances are you will take Hwy 99 out of Vancouver and down to either the Peach Arch or Pacific Hwy border crossings - if one is especially busy, try the other crossing, they are only 10 minutes apart (just follow the signs).

You will be travelling against rush hour traffic, so the only major bottleneck you may hit is the Massey Tunnel, but if you head out after 9am, you should be ok.

The tunnel may still be bad, but generally you're heading in the other direction to rush hour so it won't be horrendous. Monday is supposed to be sunny too, which will help.

If you do get in your car and away promptly (by 9am or earlier), you will almost certainly be better off with the bridge (route 91) than the tunnel - it's a wee bit shorter distance but most importantly has no issue with contraflow like the tunnel at rush hour (which does not actually have fixed times, just 7:30-9:30am ISH) - so unless you would hit definitely the tunnel after 10am there's a good chance on any weekday that you will be slowed!

You can look at historic traffic on Google, just click the little floating Traffic info over the map and change it from Live to Typical. A several mile stretch of 99 approaching the tunnel will be Red from before you could possibly be off the ship until at least 9:30am before it starts to fade through Orange and Yellow, with Green only appearing well after 10am whereas the 91 stays Green for southbound traffic right through rush hour.

Ideally though check your phone if you have data, so you can use your preferred navigation tools, but worst-case just sign up to the free city WiFi network (@VanWiFi) and check Google's timings for the potential routes. This way any 'on the day' major issues with any major route should appear - and if you don't have some kind of live navigation on your phone, I agree tuning to local radio is a sensible thing to do!

Thank you so much everyone! I really appreciate the responses! Very helpful information!

It’s the border, not the traffic, that’s the problem.