I live in Shawnigan Lake, I’ve taken that route a few dozen times. Both for accidents, and If the highway is backed up past the Millstream offramp because it saves about an hour at that point and I just want to get home. That being said, I only do it in my car, I won’t even do it in my Minivan due to poor visibility. I also almost never go into town on Fridays, so it’s not something I commonly need to use.

It’s only really become a significant bypass during this latest construction (of the washout repairs) because of where the bottleneck currently is. It should settle down again when they finish in the fall/winter.