Greater Sudbury’s Barrydowne Road is ranked among the top 10 worst roads in North and East Ontario.
CAA released its 2021 list of Ontario’s worst roads. While streets in Ottawa made up the majority of the list for North and East Ontario, North Bay’s Third Avenue West took the dubious honours of being the worst road in the province.
Barrydowne Road took the sixth spot on the list, with Thunder Bay’s Tokio Street taking the No. 5 spot. With the exception of Montée Outaouais, in Clarence-Rockland, the remaining worst roads for North and East Ontario were all in Ottawa.
In Ontario, 117 municipalities saw roads in their communities nominated. Drivers accounted for most of the votes being cast, with cyclists and pedestrians accounting for about a quarter of the votes.
Voters shared their primary reasons for selecting a road, with 81 per cent citing potholes or crumbling pavement, followed by traffic congestion (11 per cent) and no or poor walking infrastructure (seven per cent).
“Road safety starts with road quality,” said Jeff Walker, president and CEO of CAA North and East Ontario. “The cost of poor roads isn’t just to commerce and trade, but as our Poor Roads study showed this year, they also cost Canadian motorists more than $3 billion a year in operating costs.”
Walker said even with stay-at-home orders and lockdowns, roads are still deteriorating, “but we’re seeing different ones on the list this year. And, in our region, it’s clear that people care because we saw a 62-per-cent increase in voting over 2019, when the survey was last run.”
