There are some streets in Toronto where drivers feel like they’re white knuckling through it, as their car bounces between smooth roadway and sharp or wide divots on their drive—but which street has the worst potholes?
CTV News Toronto asked readers to send in their submissions for the worst pothole-laden roads in Toronto, and at least a dozen wrote back sharing their thoughts.
One reader pointed to a pothole at Carlaw Avenue and Queen Street East, saying how drivers tend to avoid it as it’s about eight inches deep.
Another pointed to New Street in Etobicoke, saying it is “especially bad” during the snowy winter months while another likened Unwin Avenue, between Cherry and Leslie streets, to that of a “war zone” due to the minefield of potholes that’s riddled the strip of roadway.
For Victoria Collins, the worst pothole is at a bus stop near Brimley Road and Lawrence Avenue—one she says started small about a couple of years ago but has since evolved into a two-metre gap, prompting Collins to take cover at a nearby house to avoid “tidal wave” like splashes after careless drivers pass through.
“It’s literally going right over the bus stop, which is hilarious, and especially it being half-slush, which is so fun,” Collins said.
“There’s been a time where I’ve emailed my work being like, ‘I’m going home now, I’m not even coming to work, because I am covered.’”
Similar to Collins’s cavernous pothole in Scarborough, the pothole located at the intersection of Sunnylea Avenue East and Prince Edward Drive South in Etobicoke earned Robyn Philips’s vote for the worst, namely for the fact it’s nestled on heavy traffic intersection.
“It’s a big intersection, so it’s a lot of pedestrian traffic, a lot of cyclists, and there’s a bus route and there’s a fire route,” Philips told CTV News Toronto.
“It really narrows the street, which is already narrow, so like people can’t walk around it and then it gets really flooded when it rains.”
Amanda Gifford could not submit a single pothole for consideration, but rather, a series of them along a stretch of Hwy. 401.
“It is approximately 15 potholes located on the 401 Westbound starting at the Port Union entrance and continuing until roughly Meadowvale,” Gifford said in an email statement, adding that she did, indeed, count.
“When you spend enough time white knuckling the steering wheel and questioning your life choices, you start doing field research.”
Gifford says “this lovely stretch of highway” gave a flat tire to her vehicle one Friday morning during a recent snowstorm.
Since then, Gifford says about six of the divots have been filled, though in a manner that sounds like it was done haphazardly (“in a way that suggests someone gently tossed asphalt in the general direction and hoped for the best.”)
“The remaining ones are still operating at full tire destroying capacity,” Gifford wrote.
Philips said she called 311 on Wednesday and the following day city staff came by to investigate.
However, Philips said this particular street has had pothole problems for nearly the last two decades.
“It’s gotten progressively worse, and then the city comes in and fills it, and then it breaks again, and it’s kind of a cycle,” Philips said.
Collins, however, is still waiting for the pothole to get filled, something she says she has been waiting for since she contacted 311 on Feb. 20.
“I got the automatic message where they were like, ‘We’re working on it,’” Collins said, recounting how she received that text at around 2 a.m.
Doubting that they worked in the middle of the night, Collins texted her mother to go take a look at the pothole the following day, as she had gotten a text that it was finished just before 7 a.m. on a Saturday.
“I was like, ‘Mom, they working out there?’ She was like, ‘Absolutely not,’” Collins said.
In a statement to CTV News Toronto, the city confirmed there have been 3,670 pothole service since the start of March.
This year, as of March 9, the city said they have filled more than 54,000 potholes and acknowledged it has seen a higher volume of calls than in recent years.
“City crews are proactively identifying, documenting and repairing pothole and road damage during ongoing routine patrols and repair operations,” Myles Currie, director of winter and seasonal transportation services at the city, said in a statement.
When the city can perform these repairs depends on the weather, Currie notes.
“Potholes repairs are less effective during very cold weather or when it is snowing or raining because the asphalt will not bond properly to the road surface.”
