‘Hope for the best’: Number of potholes piling up in Montreal

If vehicular slalom were an Olympic event at next month’s Winter Games, a Montrealer would surely take the top prize.

Montreal drivers swerving left and right to avoid potholes has become a typical sight this January.

“For us taxi drivers, it makes it very difficult when we pick people up. We have to drive in zigzags to escape the holes,” said cab driver Alomy Orelien.

The early pothole season is likely due to fluctuating temperatures – from cold to warm and back to cold again.

“Right now, with the weather we’re having, it’s above the freezing point, but it’s going to go below the freezing point,” said André Durocher, the director of road safety and community relations at CAA-Québec. “That means it’s going to be more freezing and then more thawing and probably the situation, even when some potholes are fixed, they may have to be re-fixed again in the next couple of days.”

Environment Canada says Montreal is in for more fluctuating temperatures this week.

It makes for a challenging drive in the city.

“I have to be very alert. I am very alert,” one driver told CityNews. “I see the potholes and I have to go around them. But sometimes I miss it because there’s too many and I go bang and bang my car.

“I’ve been lucky. I didn’t get damage in my car, but I see the noise it makes when I get in the potholes. Some are really big ones.”

Coming away from a bad pothole without any damage is a luxury some drivers simply don’t know.

“There’s plenty of potholes everywhere and they really damage the cars,” one Montrealer said. “The cars, they’re often in the garage. And with the amount of tax we pay, they don’t really care about our roads. They should fix the roads better than that.

“The suspension, always problem with cars, and doesn’t last long even if you repair it. It’s very, very bad.”

That means more calls to repair shops like the one owned by Juan Henriquez in Griffintown. He says pothole-related repairs have surged this month, with drivers calling in at nearly double the usual rate.

“Easy, I receive like maybe six, seven calls per day like that,” he said. “That’s like minimum. I can receive like 10, 15 calls.

“It’s getting worse and worse. I don’t know if it’s the quality of the asphalt they use.”

Henriquez says late winter is the worst time of year for pothole damage, especially after heavy snow and sudden swings in temperature.

CAA-Québec says it’s receiving an average of about 2,200 calls per day in the province, which director of public affairs Nicolas Ryan called standard for this time of year.

Over the Christmas break, however, CAA frequently received more than 3,000 calls per day — a rarity for the organization.

This past weekend — Jan. 10 and 11 — the amount of calls for blown tires roughly doubled in comparison to the norm. Ryan thinks it could be because of potholes.

“Our teams have pretty much been all around the past couple of weeks,” he said.

CAA-Québec provided some tips for drivers.

“If you go too fast, and you see a pothole and you slam the brakes right into a pothole, what happens is the law of gravity is the weight of your car is going to go forward, and you’re probably going to damage your car even more,” Durocher said. “If you’ve got a pothole in front of you, it’s almost like take your foot off the gas, hope for the best, that’s about all you can do.

“So with that being said, the best thing to do is to slow down our speed in the city of Montreal because a pothole could pop up anytime. And also keep our distance between ourselves and the vehicle ahead of us because that person may have a pothole in front of them and they can slam on the brakes.”

If you do hit a pothole hard, Durocher also has some recommendations.

“It’s a good thing to pull over maybe and have a look at what’s the extent of the damages and report the pothole,” he said. “Doesn’t mean that you necessarily will be able to be compensated, but if they are reported, if every time there’s one, it is reported, well, the city has sort of… it’s called due diligence.

“Of course, if the pothole just popped up, you can’t expect it to be fixed immediately, but if it’s a recurring one that people have been reporting over and over again over a period of time, there may be compensations there available.”

Drivers may have reason to breathe a sigh of relief.

In its new budget tabled Monday, the City of Montreal says it will invest $683 million in road repairs in 2026 – a 13 per cent increase from last year.

CityNews has reached out to the City of Montreal to find out how many pothole complaints have been made this winter.