Three westbound lanes of Highway 417 are closed this weekend between the Vanier Parkway and Nicholas Street, creating significant delays for drivers across Ottawa as crews work on a damaged watermain valve. The shutdown began late Friday and is expected to remain in place until early Monday morning, when all lanes and on-ramps in the area are scheduled to reopen. The closure has funneled hundreds of vehicles onto nearby neighborhood streets, with drivers reporting long backups and slower-than-usual travel times. Detours have pushed many motorists through areas like Sandy Hill, Tremblay Road, and Coventry Road as they look for ways around the bottleneck. Taxi drivers like Garish Beri near VIA Rail say the impact has been immediate. “It’s affecting time, two lanes are working, but it’s slow,” he says. “Before it was not that bad, only rush hour, you’d see two, three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon, but now every time you go on the highway it’s backed up.” Other drivers echoing similar frustrations, with some saying it feels as though construction in the city has been worse than usual this year. “It’s like forever, I plan my day but even at that I’m stuck in traffic constantly,” commuter Liza Drouin said. “I don’t understand what’s going on, it’s like there’s construction absolutely everywhere in the city, all at the same time.”
