Empress Street voted worst road in Manitoba

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This article was published 26/04/2018 (2958 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitobans have voted, and the province’s worst road is Empress Street in Winnipeg.

More than 6,000 votes were cast for nearly 700 roads in Manitoba, with nearly 1,000 thumbs down for Empress Street, said Liz Kulyk, Canadian Automotive Association (CAA) Manitoba’s corporate manager of government and community relations.

“Empress Street has been deteriorating for more than a decade, and there’s been so much re-construction and re-development with new buildings in this area; lots of wear and tear has come to the roads in this area because of lots of trucks and more people coming down into this area to shop,” Kulyk said at Thursday’s announcement.

Motorists told CAA they particularly try to avoid the curb lanes on Empress between Maroons Road and St. Matthews Avenue because that’s where conditions are the worst with potholes and crumbling concrete for almost the entire stretch.

Last year, there was even rebar showing near the intersection of Empress Street and Maroons Road, Kulyk said.

Manitoba’s Worst Roads is a month-long online voting campaign run by CAA Manitoba, a travel and automotive insurance company. This is the seventh year they’ve run the campaign with the goal of drawing attention to Manitoba’s most unsafe roads.

CAA clubs across Canada also run Worst Roads campaigns in their respective provinces.

Provincial Road 450 near Boissevain received the second most votes in Manitoba, ahead of Sherwin Road, Archibald Street and Saskatchewan Avenue in Winnipeg.

Eligible candidates must have at least one of the following criteria: brutal traffic congestion, potholes or crumbling pavement, traffic lights with poor timing, risks to the safety of pedestrians or cyclists, or a lack of road signs and markings.

“The point is, everybody suffers from bad roads, not just people in cars,” Kulyk said.

Three of the top-five worst roads in Manitoba were in St. James, which is nothing new said Coun. Scott Gillingham (St. James-Brooklands-Weston), as roads from his constituency make the list every year.

However, the city is investing in street renewal. A priority in the city’s 2018 budget was to maintain its “record level” infrastructure investment, putting $116 million towards street renewal — up $11 million from 2017.

Since 2014, $75 million has been put toward road renewal in St. James alone, Gillingham said.

And good news for drivers: work on Empress Street will start this summer.

The street will get $17.4 million worth of work done over two years to renew the street, work on the Portage Avenue overpass and create a new transportation path that will go north-to-south, on the east side of Empress, Gillingham said.

In 2017, the worst road in Winnipeg was Chevrier Boulevard between Dovercourt Drive and Pembina Highway. The worst rural road was Provincial Road 239 in Faulkner.

The results of the Worst Roads campaign are shared with both the City of Winnipeg and the provincial government.

nicholas.frew@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @n_frew6