Cutting corners around town

Local professional drivers give tips on city navigation

Steve Tedham makes his living driving around the city. His advice for navigating city streets? Don’t speed. Samuel Swanson

When it comes to driving a vehicle, getting around the city efficiently is something many drivers strive to do. But they don’t often achieve their goal, according to the city’s professional drivers.

Fortunately, professional city navigators were willing to share their driving tips with The Uniter.

The first myth to dispel is that driving faster will get you there faster.

“You can’t make any money speeding,” said Ray Mackelson Sr., who has spent the last seven years as a professional courier at United Messenger.

Steve Tedham, a driver for Pizzaland who’s been driving professionally for three years delivering goods ranging from pizzas to car parts, agreed.

“You can make $250 a night hustling pizzas, but all it takes is one (speed camera) flash and you’re down. You just worked for free,” he said.

Mackelson and Tedham both added that driving faster means more stopping and starting, which adds to the gas bill.

Using back alleys, however, is a great way to save time.

“Probably 50 per cent of my day is driving down back alleys to get from A to B,” said Mackelson. “You can probably cut your time by three quarters. It might take two minutes to get around the block, but you can cut through (an alley) in 20 seconds.”

Using back alleys also helps to avoid red-light lineups.

“That whole strip of downtown Portage, none of the lights are timed in sequence. Sometimes you’ll stop at one light just to stop at the next light right after,” said Tedham. “So if you can find an alley to go around that, that’s money, right there.”

So why don’t more drivers use back alleys? Because their locations are not widely published information, according to Tedham.

“They’re not marked on maps ... so you gotta go there in order to know there’s an alley,” he said.

Online navigation is useful, but not always.

“The thing about Google Maps, Mapquest ... that kind of thing is that there are a lot of suburban developments in the city, and they’re never on those sites,” Tedham said.

Both drivers agreed the city’s urban planning doesn’t help getting around.

“Instead of planning out where the city was going to go, they just tacked shit on and said, ‘Where it goes is where it goes and we’ll try to make it work,’” Tedham said.

“And if it doesn’t work, (they’ll) tear it up and do it again next summer or next month,” Mackelson added.

From a cab driver’s perspective, it’s all about knowing which streets and areas to avoid.

Knowing alternative routes is how to beat traffic, according to Tom Garden, a driver with Unicity Taxi.

“(L)ike this morning, there was a traffic jam on Kenaston (Boulevard), so I went Kenaston to Centennial (Street) and beat all the traffic.”

Find more professional tips for efficient driving in Samuel’s blog at www.uniter.ca/blog

Published in Volume 64, Number 25 of The Uniter (April 1, 2010)

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