Read ’em and weep: Ontario’s worst roads revealed
If you live in Ontario, you know that the roads aren’t always the best—especially for cycling. With towns and districts devoted to manufacturing and natural resources dotted throughout the provincial map, the attendant huge, hulking trucks of those industries can wear down a street pretty quick. Coupled with the buckling effects of the province’s sometimes-extreme temperature fluctuations, a bitterly cold winter followed by a brutally hot summer, you have the makings of cracked, pothole-riddled, warped streets everywhere, and it’s something Ontarians love to hate.
Thursday, a list of Ontario’s worst roads was published, and believe it or not, Toronto’s weren’t the worst. One of them came close, though.
The list is part of an online campaign organized by the Canadian Automobile Association called Worst Roads: a crowd-sourcing effort surveying Ontarians about which small-town or big-city arteries are at the bottom of the province’s transportation barrel, and why. There must be a good deal of commuter frustration on the part of Ontario commuters this year, too, because the 2015 instalment saw a jump in the total number of votes—29 per cent, to be exact.
Being an initiative of the Canadian Automobile Association, there’s a definite bias in favour of roads more commonly frequented by cars or trucks or buses, of course. For those who take the lane, though, all lanes are bike lanes. And some of those lanes, unfortunately, are on roads that can seem tantamount to biking on the surface of the moon.
This year, Timmins, Ont., took the dubious distinction of having the two worst roads in the province. Technically, though, both “honours” recognize the poor, pockmarked condition of the same road, just in different directions. Algonquin Blvd. W. and Algonquin Blvd. E were the worst and second-worst roads on the list, respectively, based on longstanding complaints about its evidently dire need for resurfacing. Perhaps officials knew those results were coming: earlier this month, The Weather Network reported, officials pledged as much as $1 million to fix up Algonquin Blvd., out of an allocated $7.3 million for bridge repairs and general road upkeep.
Toronto also found itself in the list’s upper echelon, with Dufferin Street ranked as the third worst street in the province—again. A major north-south route through the city, Dufferin is infamous for its uneven surfaces and frequent potholes, resulting in a veritable slalom course for cyclists along the rolling—and often densely-crowded—street. It’s the ninth year in a row that Dufferin has made the list.
The rest of the list can be read on The Weather Network’s website.
