Traffic Avoidance - Victoria Day

I’ve been crossing the Peace Arch and Pacific Highway border crossings on a regular cadence for over a decade now. In fact, I’ve crossed the border so many times I know a few border guards at Pacific Highway by name and have learned which days/time slots to avoid. But regardless of how much experience I might have crossing the US/Canada border, some days just suck. Victoria Day, unsurprisingly, is one of those days. This year I thought I’d try using historical data to help me pick the best travel time and help me avoid long waits.

Like most British Columbians, I turned Victoria day into a 4 day weekend. The plan was to leave on Friday and return either Sunday or Monday. The question was, would I save myself wait time at the border by returning Sunday rather than Monday? To find out I referenced 2017 wait times at the Douglas Peach arch crossing over Victoria Day. The answer to my question was maybe. In 2017, if I had arrived at the border before 4pm PDT I would have largely missed northbound border traffic. From about 4pm onwards, traffic slowly builds, peaking between 8pm and 10pm. On Monday, traffic builds earlier. Using 2017 as a gauge, I decided that crossing Monday morning before 11am would provide the best trade-off between maximizing family-time and avoiding long border waits with kids.

I stuck to the plan as best I could with two kids, crossing the border a little before noon. My total wait time was around 10 minutes and traffic was generally light. I’m unsure whether consulting historical border wait data in fact helped me avoid border traffic, but it did prompt me to create a schedule which by itself was valuable. Check it out for yourself at Canada’s Historical Border Wait Times page.