Vancouver man hitchhikes 5 hours to get home through chaotic winter storm

Tim Singh made a few friends along the way on a five-hour commute home from work Tuesday, during which he took the Skytrain, a bus and hitchhiked in five different vehicles. 

A snowstorm that swept over B.C.'s South Coast Tuesday evening stranded commuters in the Lower Mainland for hours, with some people stuck for over 12 hours in traffic. Several highways and roads were packed with rush-hour-volume traffic until past midnight. 

And some people had to rely on the kindness of strangers to get home. 

After Singh's bus took two hours to drive just a few blocks from King George Station in Surrey, he and a fellow passenger he had befriended decided to get off and get home a different way. 

"We were like, OK, forget about it. Let's just hitchhike. It's the West Coast. Once upon a time, hitchhiking was normal."

A pickup truck pulled over within a minute of them sticking out their thumbs and drove the two about four kilometres down the Fraser Highway to 152nd Street.

Singh then travelled all the way down 152nd Street to South Surrey, a distance of about 10 kilometres, by hitchhiking in four other cars. 

"People were very generous."

Singh says he learned a thing or two along the way, and it was the best way he could have come home under the circumstances. 

"It taught me that in extraordinary circumstances, people can be extremely good."

A 9-hour commute 

Michael Scott, who has had the same commute for work from Ladner to Vancouver since 1999, says Tuesday evening's commute was the longest it has ever taken him to get home. 

Scott left work near Broadway and Main at 6 p.m. and didn't get home until nine hours later.

He found himself in bumper-to-bumper traffic on a residential street in Richmond after his GPS directed him through side streets. 

"All of these single-family residential houses are next to you, quietly snowy, and you're sitting there in downtown traffic gridlock. It was just bizarre."

Scott estimates he moved forward about 200 yards in two hours, feeling anxious and claustrophobic. 

Being completely stopped for most of the commute, Scott did what he could to pass the time: called his wife, stepped out of his car to stretch, and played Wordle. 

It was 3:15 in the morning when he finally walked in the door.

Scott says local governments and the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure should have done more in anticipation of heavy snowfall. 

"Did they not know that snow was coming? I knew it was coming, but I hadn't expected it to be not noticed by the authorities." 

Abandoned commute

Carson Hopkins also got stuck in gridlocked residential streets in Richmond Tuesday night while trying to get home to North Delta. 

He was still stopped in traffic three hours after leaving the Canucks game downtown around 9:40 p.m. 

Hopkins said people had turned off their cars, and residents in the neighbourhood were bringing out tea and snacks to people.

"I was pretty surprised how sideways things went for how little snow we got." 

Hopkins eventually decided to park his car in Richmond and jog to Ladner, where his fiancé's parents live. He says on his way there, a man stopped and gave him a ride. 

Going back to get his car Wednesday morning, Hopkins says he saw several cars, including a snow plow, stuck in ditches.