This Montreal Road Was Voted The #1 Worst In The City

Montreal's Autoroute Métropolitaine is one mean road.

That's according to CAA-Quebec's sixth annual Worst Roads campaign, which deemed the 21-kilometre stretch of Highway 40 between the Décarie interchange and boulevard Henri-Bourassa the worst road in Montreal.

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Where are the worst roads in Quebec?

In a province plagued by pot-holed roads, almost 3,000 Quebecers voted between April 20 and May 17 to decide which ones were the shabbiest and 69 crumbling thoroughfares made the cut.

Located a half-hour's drive from Montreal, chemin de la Grande-Ligne in the community of Carignan earned the dubious honour of being named the worst road in Quebec, followed by the "Ferry Ramp" access in the Gaspé community of Matane, and Rimouski's chemin du 3e-Rang-du-Bic.

Closer to home, boulevard Saint-Joseph Est and rue Saint-Denis were deemed the second and third worst roads in Montreal, respectively.

Where are the worst roads in Canada?

Have experts concluded Quebec has the worst roads in the country? "Not exactly," stated Alan Carter, a professor and manager of the Pavements and Bituminous Materials Laboratory at École de Technologie Supérieure (ÉTS), in an accompanying Q & A.

"While road conditions can differ from one province to another, the overall situation is quite similar. Generally speaking, between 15% and 25% of the roads are in bad or very bad shape," he said.

"It's important to mention, however, that it's hard to produce a comprehensive analysis of Canada's roads, since we don't have a database for that information, and the quality criteria vary from one province to the next."

However, Guy Doré, a professor at the Université Laval's Department of Civil Engineering, seemed to confirm our worst fears.

"The few studies on the subject place Quebec at the back of the pack when compared with other provinces. But we need to be careful with these statistics because the provinces and territories don't all use the same criteria to evaluate and report on road conditions."

This article's cover image is used for illustrative purposes only.