'Embarassing and frustrating,' but having the 'Worst Road in Ontario' can help northern towns land funding

Erik White · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 28, 2025 5:30 AM EDT | Last Updated: 11 minutes ago

Ontario drivers are erstwhile again voting connected which roads are the worst successful the province. 

CAA has tally the run for implicit 20 years and respective roads successful the northbound person "won" in the past, but it's been a while, with confederate streets dominating the apical 10 successful the past fewer years.

Teresa Di Felice, adjunct vice-president of authorities and assemblage relations for CAA, says drivers successful immoderate parts of the state are much utilized to unsmooth roads than others. 

"I deliberation sometimes determination is simply a quality betwixt municipalities and what radical judge arsenic the norm, versus what they privation to person attraction paid to," she said. 

Nominations are unfastened until April 18 and aft the contenders— which these days are besides nominated due to the fact that of mediocre conditions connected sidewalks and motorcycle lanes— are analyzed by experts, the 2025 database should beryllium retired successful June. 

Di Felice says CAA is arrogant of however the Worst Roads run has drawn attraction to the contented of crumbling infrastructure and keeps way of which roads extremity up being repaired aft being listed.

"The situation that municipalities person is determination is simply a backlog of roadworthy repairs and it tin beryllium hard for municipalities to docket large repairs connected the spot taxation base. Which is wherefore we besides advocator with elder levels of government," she said, adding that the Ontario authorities precocious announced plans to make a "pothole fund" to assistance tiny municipalities with repairs.

Brenda Reid, the politician of the Township of Assiginack connected Manitoulin Island, is skeptical, however.

"It's really, truly hard to get assistance for roads. It's conscionable thing that the provincial authorities has decided that municipalities person to instrumentality attraction of their ain roads," she said.

"So, hopefully we'll ne'er beryllium connected that database again."

Back successful 2006, Cardwell Street, a abbreviated agrarian roadworthy successful Assiginack moving betwixt the colony of Manitowaning and the Indigenous assemblage of Wikwemikong was voted worst successful Ontario.

In an interrogation with CBC vigor astatine the time, riding on the bumpy washboard road, past Mayor Leslie Fields described the potholes connected Cardwell as "fairly heavy and reasonably large...You could burry a raccoon successful it and not see'em."

"It's embarrassing astatine the aforesaid clip it's precise frustrating that we couldn't get the provincial authorities to perceive to us," said Reid, who sat on municipality assembly backmost successful 2006.

"To support that happening successful pavement it was precise hard astatine the time."

But she said they did usage the worst roadworthy rubric to onshore provincial backing to hole up Cardwell and present much than a decennary later, says it is inactive a comparatively creaseless ride.

In 2015, Timmins Mayor Steve Black encouraged citizens to ballot for Algonquin Boulevard, which ended up winning the rubric and successful the years to come, has gone done a multi-million-dollar facelift, mostly fuelled by provincial funding.