'I got scared': Cavernous Montreal pothole takes two drivers hostage

Montreal -

Drivers beware: not one but two motorists say a particularly cavernous pothole on Montreal’s south end left them stranded with blown tires on the same day.

“There are so many potholes everywhere. But this one, I felt it,” said LaSalle resident Angelina Solovieva, who says a patch of chewed-up road leading to Highway 20 West put her car out of commission Friday.

She heard a “boom” sound when she drove over it, she said.

“I got scared,” said Solovieva, “that it was going to turn my car over on its side – that was my biggest fear because I had a (eight-year-old) child in the backseat.”

She says the hole – located on the westbound on-ramp from Highway 138 to Highway 20 – punctured her tire. She didn’t have a spare.

When she realized her situation, she put her hazards on and turned off to a nearby service road before pulling in to a nearby car dealership.

She said clerks told her their garage wouldn’t open until Monday – she opted to leave her car there for the weekend. She had set out that day to do some holiday shopping at a nearby furniture department store, but all that that would have to wait.

Still at the dealership, she had to call for help to get home, but not before she met a man with a similar story.

“It was dark there, on that stretch of road,” said Matthew Layne. “There are already a whole bunch of potholes already, but I didn’t see how big that one was.”

Layne, a Laval resident, said he’s no stranger to Montreal’s lousy roads. He had been helping a friend move some stuff into a storage locker that day. The job was cut short by the hole when, like Solovieva, his tire ran flat.

“I could feel the difference in my car,” he said, as he turned off to an adjacent service road. “I was like, ‘Oh God, please.’ ”

The two exchanged numbers near the dealership. They told CTV they plan to file a complaint with the city.

Lasalle resident Angelina Solovieva says her tire was punctured by a seriously deep pothole on Montreal's south side on Dec. 10, 2021 (Photo courtesy of Angelina Solovieva)

LaSalle resident Angelina Solovieva says her tire was punctured by a seriously deep pothole on Montreal's south side on Dec. 10, 2021 (Photo courtesy of Angelina Solovieva)

DETERIORATING ROADS

Maxime Parent, an advisor at Spinelli Toyota Lachine, where Solovieva sought solace and assistance that night, said more and more drivers are turning up at the garage with pothole-related needs.

It feels like “the holes are bigger and bigger every year,” he said, adding potholes pose a bigger threat during the wintertime, when they’re harder to see.

Beyond a flat tire, which usually costs about $300 to fix, a deep pothole can affect vehicle alignment and suspension. Those types of repairs can be very costly, Parent said.

The pothole problem is “not only Montreal. It’s everywhere” in Quebec, he said.

Quebec drivers may feel instinctively that their roads are among Canada's worst, and that's far from an exaggeration. A CAA study published in March found Quebecers pay on average $258 per year on vehicle maintenance due to poor road quality.

That’s more than double the national average of $126.

Comparatively, the average annual cost of poor roads per vehicle is $88 in Ontario, which was among the best-rated provinces for road conditions.

According to the study, more than half the surveyed kilometres of roadway (both highways and not) in Quebec were deteriorated, or showed signs of decay. 

Montreal has processes in place to report potholes, and to get reimbursed for the havoc they wreak.