CAA-Quebec Awards | Boulevard de la Gappe in Gatineau, crowned “Quebec’s worst road” in 2022

CAA-Quebec unveiled Wednesday the “big losers” of its 2022 list of the worst roads in Quebec. Roads in the Outaouais, Chaudière-Appalaches and Capitale-Nationale regions make up almost all of the winners.

Audrey Pilon Topkara
The Press

The second and third positions are held respectively by the route du Vieux-Moulin in Saint-Isidore, in Chaudière-Appalaches, and the boulevard du Curé-Labelle (route 117) in Saint-Jérôme, in the Laurentians.

“What is special this year with Boulevard de la Gappe in Gatineau is that even before the launch of our campaign The worst roadsthere were denunciations being made in the media,” commented Nicolas Ryan, director of public affairs at CAA-Quebec, in an interview with The Press.

“Beyond road comfort, there is the question of road safety. A road that is damaged can inevitably become dangerous and cause injuries or even deaths,” he insists.

At the beginning of March, the Mayor of Gatineau, France Bélisle, described the state of the roadway on Boulevard de la Gappe as “lamentable”, in a post on her Facebook page.

“Additional repairs have their limits, but with freeze-thaw, you have to be patient a little longer. Ville de Gatineau is advancing the long-term repair work planned for this section for intervention as soon as possible. Security features have been added temporarily. Be careful in the meantime,” it read.

Mr. Ryan adds that a follow-up will be done with the municipalities concerned by the classification, in particular on the question of the work and its progress.

The annual list is completed by Cook Road in Gatineau (Outaouais), Sainte-Brigitte Avenue in Sainte-Brigitte-de-Laval (National Capital), Gourdeau Avenue in Saint-Agapit (Chaudière-Appalaches), avenue Saint-Sacrement in Québec (Capitale-Nationale), avenue Taniata in Lévis (Chaudière-Appalaches), chemin Sainte-Foy in Québec and route 105 in Gatineau.

For a seventh year, nearly 9,000 votes from motorists, truckers, cyclists and pedestrians were received from April 26 to May 26, 2022, as part of the campaign The worst roads from CAA-Quebec.

CAA-Quebec has also compiled a list of the worst roads, region by region.

Highlight: no road in the city of Montreal is part of the ranking this year. A finding that can be attributed to the teleworking implemented during the pandemic, according to the director of public affairs of CAA-Quebec.

“Since the pandemic, we see fewer people going downtown. The offices are a bit deserted,” he explains. Fewer people were driving to the office, so inevitably there were fewer complaints about the state of the roads in the metropolis.

In 2019, Boulevard Gouin Est in Montreal was named “Quebec’s worst road”.

Investments needed

Nicolas Ryan deplores the lack of investment in road infrastructure over the past 50 years in Quebec. Another element to consider in the equation, the harsh Quebec winter accelerates the deterioration of the roadway, thus favoring the formation of potholes.

According to data from the Ministère des Transports du Québec (MTQ), investments for the preservation of pavements reached approximately $740 million in 2019-2020.

Still according to the MTQ, investments for the preservation of the structures of the higher network throughout Quebec amounted to more than $823 million in 2019-2020. During the 2020-2022 period, $1.8 billion will have been invested in structural maintenance projects.

However, are the highways in Quebec worse than elsewhere in Canada? A study conducted by the Canadian Automobile Association (CAA), published in March 2021, confirms that it is.

Quebec taxpayers pay nearly $1.4 billion every year because of poor road conditions. While Quebec motorists pay approximately $258 per year, Canadian motorists must on average pay $126 per year to compensate for the poor state of the roads.

Guy Doré, full professor at the Faculty of Civil Engineering at Laval University, still believes that we already have realistic solutions to improve the condition of the roads in Quebec. “It’s quite simple. You just have to invest in the network and do the job well,” he told The Press.

He concedes that the needs of the aging road network are enormous, but current budgets are generally insufficient to address the problem. “You don’t just have to invest more money, you also have to do better, so use the right technologies, the right materials and the right workers. That’s the whole challenge,” he summarizes.