BRAE — Brae Harbour Road resident Mary Oulton claims she and fellow residents along this West Prince road have no means of avoiding a long stretch of potholes.
“Unless you want to take a boat and go around by the water,” she quips.
During the first kilometer of the road, on the ride in alone, motorists encounter approximately 60 potholes of varying depths.
The road has been third in the Canadian Automobile Association’s 2018 Worst Roads Atlantic Canada campaign. CAA Atlantic reports that every road in Atlantic Canada is eligible to be named in its Worst Road campaign. Online voting closed last nght at midnight.
“It is bad. Right now, you’re driving down the road, and you’re fish-tailing all over the place – you know, trying to avoid the potholes.”
Donna MacIsaac
As of April 11, the Brae Harbour Road was the only road in Prince Edward Island in the campaign’s Top 10. It was one of two Prince Edward Island roads making the Top 10 worst roads list last year, placing seventh. Clark Road in North Bedeque finished fourth in 2017.
Brae Harbour Road, home to a half-dozen year-round dwellings and numerous seasonal properties, has been holding onto third place in the voting even though it is up against some heavily populated roads and streets, including University Avenue in Moncton and Highway 101 through Hoyt, N.B.
“It is bad,” says Outlon’s neighbour, Donna MacIsaac. “Right now, you’re driving down the road, and you’re fish-tailing all over the place – you know, trying to avoid the potholes.”
Related: What’s P.E.I.’s worst road? CAA wants to know
MacIsaac said the road does get a lot of traffic, especially in the summer when the seasonal residents return and people drive down to enjoy the scenic vistas along the water. A half-kilometer section of the road got re-surfaced in 2016 and another half-kilometer was done last year. That leaves about 1.2 kilometers of broken pavement between the Beaton Road entrance and the new sections over which all residents must travel. There are also repairs needed beyond the repaved sections. Residents are hoping the attention the CAA campaign generates will help bring more repairs.
“It’s not a long road. It would be nice if they did to the corner and they wouldn’t have to worry about us anymore,” said MacIsaac. “We wouldn’t be on their backs.”
O’Leary-Inverness MLA Robert Henderson, whose riding takes in the Brae Harbour Road, admits the road is in poor condition, but he points out there are other roads in his district in need of repairs, too. He says there is nothing scientific about the CAA poll and it will have zero impact on the priority list. Instead, he will be conducting a tour of all the roads in his district in late May or early June and will base his priority list on the conditions at that time. He points out he is allotted about five kilometers of paving per year and has to spread it out as fairly as possible throughout the district.
Gerald McNally, who lives on the McAllar Road, just across from the entrance to the Brae Harbour Road, said last year people drove primarily on the shoulder to avoid the potholes.
Oulton said she understands her road was paved in 1967. “Up here by us and down at the other end, as far as I know, it’s still the original road with all those years of patches.
“You can’t put patches on patches forever.”
