CAA-Quebec surveys 5,000 people to find the province's worst roads
Chemin de la Traverse, north of Quebec City, labelled the worst road in Quebec
CAA-Quebec says when it launched its first-ever survey to find the worst roads in the province, it never thought it would get thousands of responses.
Over the last month, 5,000 people submitted the names of streets that they thought should be ranked the worst.
"We thought that maybe we'd have more votes for mainly big cities like Montreal or Quebec City, but we're happy to see that people from all around Quebec voted, and that's an indicator for us that there's a problem with our road system and it's a concern for motorists," said CAA-Quebec spokeswoman Anne-Sophie Hamel.
Rankings based on road conditions, traffic lights
Motorists based their votes on the state of the road itself, taking into account things such as potholes or cracks in the pavement.
Streets where traffic lights aren't synchronized or roads that have poor lane markings also made the list.
The big winner was Chemin de la Traverse, which runs from Lac-Beauport to Sainte-Brigitte-de-Laval, north of Quebec City.
Coming in second was Boulevard Laure in Sept-Îles, where Mayor Réjean Porlier started a campaign to encourage citizens to vote for the boulevard.
The Ministry of Transport recently announced it was going improve traffic flow on Boulevard Laure by adjusting the lights.
In Montreal, the worst street was considered to be Papineau Avenue, which came in at number 10 on the provincial list. Following closely in 11th place was De La Savane Street.
Survey made a difference in other provinces
CAA-Quebec said that while this was the first time the survey was launched in Quebec, the poll has been an annual event in other provinces — and has made a difference.
"In Ontario, about 90 per cent of the roads that were selected as the worst roads of that province were repaired or are being repaired right now. So those numbers were encouraging for us," Hamel said, adding that several city officials have already contacted CAA to say that they were going to put these roads are on the top of their to-do lists.
