StatsCan: Canada's road networks remained relatively unchanged
The stock and condition of Canada's roads and bridges remained consistent from 2018 to 2020, according to new results from Canada's Core Public Infrastructure Survey for 2020.
Construction was completed for 43,316 kilometres (two-lane equivalent) of roads in 2019 and 2020, representing 4% of the road network. This compares with 48,969 kilometres reported for 2017 and 2018, in the previous iteration of Canada's Core Public Infrastructure Survey. Almost half (49%) of the roads built in 2019 and 2020 were reported by rural municipalities in Quebec and Saskatchewan with less than 5,000 residents.
Road conditions were mostly unchanged compared with 2018, with over half the length of roads in Canada reported to be in good or very good condition in 2020 (54%) and a little over one-tenth in poor or very poor condition (13%).
Similarly, there was little change in the conditions of Canada's bridges in 2020 compared with 2018. Over half (57%) were in good or very good condition and 11% were rated as poor or very poor. The condition of bridges located in larger urban municipalities, those with at least 30,000 residents, were found to be in better condition than those in other types of municipalities (65% of bridges in larger urban municipalities were in good or very good condition).
During 2019 and 2020, construction was completed for 1,606 bridges. More than three-quarters were reported by rural municipalities (1,242), with Quebec building the most bridges in that period (681), followed by Ontario (346) and the Prairie provinces (482).