How a little industrial road in St. James cracked the podium of CAA Manitoba’s Worst Roads

The fact that Empress Street has been voted the worst road in Manitoba will come as no surprise to anyone who drives near Polo Park.

But the next worst road in Winnipeg, according to CAA Manitoba, might leave you scratching your head.

Pop quiz: where in Winnipeg is Sherwin Road? Could you find it on a map?

Turns out, it’s a small industrial road in St. James, running from Saskatchewan Avenue north to Notre Dame Avenue. It’s barely over a kilometre in length. But as regular drivers of the road will tell you, it sucks.

“I do not take it anymore. I go the long way around, because this road is absolutely brutal. I’m in second or third gear, maximum, because of the potholes.”

“When my boss comes in from Regina, he will not allow me to drive down that road.”

“Even though I got big wheels, it beats the crap out of you. It hurts your vehicle.”

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "I do not take it anymore. I go the long way around, because this road is absolutely brutal. I'm in second or third gear, maximum, because of the potholes."</p><p>"When my boss comes in from Regina, he will not allow me to drive down that road."</p><p>"Even though I got big wheels, it beats the crap out of you. It hurts your vehicle."

There is a lot of heavy truck traffic on this road, thanks in large part to Bison Transport calling Sherwin Road home. Smaller vehicles can (and do) weave around some of the bigger potholes on the road, but big rigs have no choice but to run through them.

“Because of the heavy traffic it receives, it does get pretty beat up,” Councillor Scott Gillingham, whose ward contains three of the five worst roads in Manitoba, said. “I’ve been talking to the department about the condition of the road. They’re well aware of that. We do know that it really needs to be examined because it’s so important to our economy.”

Gillingham said that refurbishment of the road is tentatively scheduled for 2020, which would be another in a long list of roads in St. James that have been fixed after featuring prominently on CAA’s hit list.

“Ness used to be one of the worst roads, we worked on Ness. St. James was on the list, it’s now off the list. We did $20 million worth of investment into St. James Street,” Gillingham explained.

“It’s been my goal, as I see those roads on the list, to get them off the list, and we’ve been doing that. We still have a ways to go, Empress is number one this year, but we have $17 million worth of investment to reconstruct Empress that will begin this year.”

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "It's been my goal, as I see those roads on the list, to get them off the list, and we've been doing that. We still have a ways to go, Empress is number one this year, but we have $17 million worth of investment to reconstruct Empress that will begin this year."

CAA Manitoba hopes by doing this list every year, they turn up the heat on decision makers.

“The point of this campaign is for people to be able to voice their concerns,” Liz Kulyk with CAA Manitoba explained. “It’s not scientific, it’s not saying that this road is definitely worse than every other road, but this is what concerns people. It’s about improving and planning for the future.”

As for Sherwin Road, Kulyk admitted she had to search it out to find it.

“We went down to Sherwin a couple times because we said, ‘Where is Sherwin Road? Who’s driving on Sherwin Road?’ There’s some pretty deep potholes, it’s pretty horrible,” Kulyk said. “Roads shouldn’t be in that condition. Just talking about the state of some of these roads I think keeps the issue top of mind. Not many people see Sherwin Road, but it’s important for people to remember the state that it’s in.”