Toronto's Lake Shore Boulevard is such a mess, Masai Ujiri had to walk to a Raptors game
Toronto is known for its brutal gridlock and Lake Shore Boulevard’s route through the city centre has developed a particularly bad reputation for impassable traffic conditions. It’s a problem that affects all motorists and passengers, even ultra-important types like Toronto Raptors’ President Masai Ujiri.
A clip making the rounds on TikTok reportedly shows the basketball executive caught in a very relatable situation this week, walking along the centre median of Lake Shore Boulevard amid a static parking lot of frustrated drivers.
The video was captured at 7 pm on Wednesday, shortly before the start of an NBA play-in tournament game at Scotiabank Arena, where the Raptors would ultimately fall to the Chicago Bulls.
“Masai just walking down the street casually,” says the person recording the video, as the man dressed in a suit alleged to be the Raps’ prez walks away, seemingly having just abandoned his ride to move more efficiently on foot.
Even Masai Ujiri hates Toronto traffic – 📹 jay83831 https://t.co/8rhfWidrLx #Toronto pic.twitter.com/uObYXTNUhM
— blogTO (@blogTO) April 14, 2023
One comment on the original TikTok upload references the classic 1990s music video for R.E.M.’s Everybody Hurts, where people stuck in highway traffic ditch their cars en masse.
Other comments focus on Lake Shore’s persistent traffic issues, with one blaming traffic lights that change too quickly and another calling out pedestrians for crossing intersections when countdown clocks are almost expired.
The flow of traffic along Lake Shore’s stretch past busy destinations like Scotiabank Arena and the Rogers Centre seems to have deteriorated in the last few years, and jams like this are becoming more common.
Some have blamed the increased traffic on the demolition of a portion of the Gardiner Expressway in 2021, an issue that came to a head last year when motorists spent upwards of three hours trapped in gridlock along the arterial.
The closure is not solely responsible for increased traffic on Lake Shore, and many other construction and utility projects, including repairs and hazard-related slowdowns, have all contributed to a general sense that the thoroughfare is growing unusably clogged.
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