Originally Posted by
Voyager0927
It's more a matter of unpredictability than consistently long wait times. Sometimes I'm through in 30 seconds, sometimes it can be almost half an hour. Also, since driving Burlington to Montreal necessarily involves 20-25 minutes of driving on side roads no matter which way you go, I'd rather get pulled over by a small town cop for exceeding an artificially low speed limit in my home state instead of a foreign country.
That's a very good point. Radar I believe is illegal in Québec too.
The corresponding list for
U.S. CBP is slightly more comprehensive but not exhaustive by any means. I'm guessing the smaller checkpoints don't get enough traffic to justify regular wait time reporting. My suggestion is that if Champlain looks like it is backed up more than 10 minutes, it's worth your while to bail out and use the side roads, even though you're going in blind.
We've never been lucky enough to wait only 10 minutes at the 87/15 border. We're definitely going to seek an alternative.
Originally Posted by guv1976
Analise, I've not made the crossing, but there's also an option a little west of I-87, on NY 22 at Mooers. (That's the same NY 22 that used to include the Bronx's Grand Concourse as part of its route.) You can take US 11 west to NY 22, or you can bail out from I-87 at Exit 41, and take NY 191 west to NY 22 north.
Same as the Grand Concourse? That's interesting! I took a look at Google Maps and it seems the eastern crossings are closer to the highway than the western ones. We don't want to veer too far off the interstate.
A little OT, but as of 4/1/11, Canada is closing a couple of little-used, part-time border crossings that are even further west of I-87; it looks like the U.S. may continue to staff them, however, which would turn them into one-way crossings.
As that is today, this is good to know. Hopefully it won't affect the 2 crossings east of I-87; I guess we'll find out tomorrow. Thanks
Voyager0927 and
guv1976 for your assistance!