Québec Roads - QC 148




WB to Fort-Coulonge, where you'll find the longest covered bridge in Québec. Built in 1898, Pont Marchand wants you to know it is exactly 497 feet, 3 inches long, or 151.6 meters.


Crossing SB (west) toward Fort-Coulonge over the nice, wavy bridge. Hey, Québec has structures falling down that were built in the 1960s, so what do you expect here?


Enjoy some more waviness NB by clicking this video.


Blvd. des Allumettières WB in Hull, now part of Gatineau. Similarly, this was intended as an extension of Autoroute 50, and is now part of QC 148 instead. (See the big link at bottom for the former QC 148 route through Gatineau.) This is not the font Québec ever uses.


Traveling on this highway may get you eaten by rogue sheep, old Utah state highway shields, or cottage cheese. Or maybe fog. Those crazy Canadians...


Côte Angèle and Côte St-Charles SB, respectively.

This fanciful character was found on the NE corner of Côte Angèle.


WB at Montée Fassett in 2011, a new road built to connect the small settlement of Fassett with the upcoming Autoroute 50 (covered). It only serves the new Sortie 216, so there's no reason to have it open for any length.


New, ugly signs on Montée Fassett SB.


Future A-50 parallels QC 148 to the north, traveling through long series of rock cuts that are undoubtedly wide enough for four lanes, but only filled with two for the time being. These photos were taken in 2007, and A-50 is now open in 2012.


And here are WB 2011 photos approaching Montée Boucher.


Looking north 2 minutes west of Pointe-au-Chêne, again in 2011.


Slot this old westbound distance sign between the second and third photos above. Chene is a special kind of French oak, used in wine barrels (well, where else?), so this is Oak Point in 6 km, and Gatineau (which absorbed Hull recently) in 95 km.


Nothing odd about this westbound sign assembly except the distance. Why 280 meters? Why not move the sign back 20 meters for an even 300? And no, it doesn't translate into English units either (it's about 920 feet).


Looking west from the overpass of closed A-50, just west of its 2007 terminus at Sortie 254. The trail to the west extends many kilometers, but was not yet paved at that time. Like most new Québec freeways, this quickly comes back from the dualization of the Lachute bypass into a Super-2, as seen in the second photo. A-50 will be paved at some point in the near future and then opened to traffic, but extension of dualization will wait a considerably longer time than that.


QC 158 ends multiplexed with QC 148 in the middle of Lachute for no particular reason. A much more obvious end would be at QC 148 a few km to the east.


Uniquely Québecois humor advertises a St-Hubert restaurant in Saint-Eustache.


QC 344 is the route of many wonders. Somehow, one of the wonders ended up on this page, but I urge you to visit the 344 page (linked below) to see the rest of them.


Here's the back of that same assembly. As you can see, these shields have been recycled, but what's not immediately obvious is that these shields predate the early 1970's (SPUI says 1973-4, based on Rand McNally) renumbering of the entire Québec provincial highway system. After the renumbering, Autoroutes retained their one- or two-digit status, and all provincial routes were three-digit highways beginning with 1, 2, or 3. Loop and spur Autoroutes begin with 4 through 9, making a system perfectly guarded against redundancy. Before the renumbering, though, there were plenty of one- and two-digit provincial highways, as well as some suffixed routes thrown in. As I said, the QC 344 has plenty more of these, but for now, here are some closeups:


Route 18 (notice how the fleur-de-lis tripled up and pushed out the word "ROUTE") is now QC 125, running north from Montréal to Saint-Donat. Route 31 is now QC 327, running from Lachute to Mont-Tremblant to the west of Montréal. Neither route is terribly far away from this assembly.


Looking southwest as I cross the Thousand Islands River (Rivière de Milles-Îles) to Île Jésus and Laval.


QC 148 has a routing choice that can even confuse native Québecois. It's pretty clear that the original routing on Laval turned from Blvd. Arthur-Sauvé onto either Ch. St-Antoine or Avenue des Bois, and then down Rue Principale into Blvd. St-Martin across the island. What's not clear is whether, with the advent of Autoroute 440, QC 148 was rerouted to stay on Avenue des Bois to end at the A-440/A-13 junction. These photos start on Rue Principale and head east to QC 125 in the last photo, the former and perhaps current end of QC 148. The signs are certainly old, but that's no indication of whether the route is as well.

QC 301 and QC 148/301
Former QC 148, Gatineau

Continue west into Ontario on 148
Onto Autoroute 50
Onto QC 344 for some more old signs
Onto QC 117
See more covered bridges
Non-Roads photos along QC 148/Ottawa River
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