Autoroute 610 (A-610), also known as Autoroute Louis Bilodeau, is a short

spur A spur is a metal tool designed to be worn in pairs on the heels of riding boots for the purpose of directing a horse or other animal to move forward or laterally while riding. It is usually used to refine the riding aids (commands) and to ba ...

autoroute serving the eastern and northern suburbs of

Sherbrooke Sherbrooke ( , ) is a city in southern Quebec, Canada. It is at the confluence of the Saint-François River, Saint-François and Magog River, Magog rivers in the heart of the Estrie administrative region. Sherbrooke is also the name of a territ ...

Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...

, Canada. It bypasses Sherbrooke's city centre to the north and connects the A-55 and

A-10 The Fairchild Republic A-10 , also infamously known under the nickname , is a single-seat, twin-turbofan, straight-wing, subsonic attack aircraft developed by Fairchild Republic for the United States Air Force (USAF). In service since 19 ...

to Route 112, a primary regional link to East Angus,

Thetford Mines Thetford Mines (; Canada 2021 Census population 26,072) is a city in south-central Quebec, Canada. It is the seat of Les Appalaches Regional County Municipality. The city is located in the Appalachian Mountains, 187 km east-northeast of Mo ...

, and Lac-Mégantic.

History

The first section of Highway 610 was opened to traffic in 1988 as an extension of the A-10. The eastern part (east of Exit 7, formerly Exit 150), opened in 1992, is a

two-lane freeway A two-lane expressway or two-lane freeway is an expressway or freeway with only one lane in each direction, and usually no median barrier. It may be built that way because of constraints, or may be intended for expansion once traffic volumes ri ...

. Original plans for the A-10 called for it to continue east to Thetford Mines, but this section was never built. On 29 September 2006,

Transports Québec Le Ministère des Transports et de la Mobilité Durable du Québec (), known by its short form name Transports Québec or alternatively by the acronym MTQ, is a Quebec government ministry (government department), ministry responsible for transpor ...

announced plans to redesignate the section of A-10 east of the A-55 as Autoroute 610. The MTQ's rationale was that the new route number is more consistent with the Quebec road numbering plan and would be less confusing to motorists travelling through and beyond the region.News
As a result, Autoroute 10 (

multiplexed In telecommunications and computer networking, multiplexing (sometimes contracted to muxing) is a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium. The aim is to share a scarce resource— ...

with the A-55 east of km 121) reaches its terminus at the interchange with A-610. In January 2008, A-610 was renamed in honour of , a longtime broadcaster on CHLT-TV. A proposal to build the East-West Highway across central and northern

Maine Maine ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the United States, and the northeasternmost state in the Contiguous United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Provinces and ...

calls for the A-610 (its original numbering as A-10 restored) to be extended to the U.S. border at Coburn Gore where it would meet the new highway. Doing so would create a new and more direct limited-access highway link between Maine, the

Maritimes The Maritimes, also called the Maritime provinces, is a region of Eastern Canada consisting of three provinces: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. The Maritimes had a population of 1,899,324 in 2021, which makes up 5.1% of ...

, and

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

Exit list

The entire route is in

References

External links

*
Transport QuebecTransports Quebec Map

{{Quebec Autoroutes 10-6 Transport in Sherbrooke