POTHOLE PROBLEMS
After a brutal winter and cold, snowy spring so far, city crews are scrambling to catch up with a backlog of road repairs.
City roads are showing the damaging toll of what seemed like an endless winter, as crews scramble following a late start to repair a wide network of punishing potholes on Calgary streets.
Adding to the driving peril was a 12-metre-wide, but not too terribly deep, sinkhole that appeared during Wednesday’s morning commute on 9th Avenue S.W. in the downtown, snarling traffic for much of the day on the busy thoroughfare.
Tara Norton-Merrin, a spokeswoman for the city’s roads department, said repair crews have been challenged this year to respond to pothole complaints as a particularly frigid winter prevented them from doing spot repairs during warmer periods, which occurred infrequently over the winter months.
“Usually we’ll do pothole repairs in the winter during chinooks, but even when we didn’t have snow, the pavement really never got above zero degrees,” she said.
“The numbers this year are on par with the previous year, but we expect people will think there are much more because we weren’t able to get to them.”
As of this week, the city has received some 2,000 public complaints about potholes, though Norton-Merrin notes that many of those are reporting the same ones.
She expects there’s likely about 1,000 potholes throughout the city right now, and to date the city has repaired about 360. In a normal week, the city can repair about 300 potholes, with most of the work going on in the evening.
“We’ll be doing that work right through the summer,” NortonMerrin said, noting portions of 16th Avenue and Glenmore Trail generated most of the complaints.
“We do have quite a few potholes out there right now. We do have long list and we’ll be doing them on a priority basis.”
City maintenance crews had to adjust their road repair focus early Wednesday morning, when a significantly sized piece of pavement collapsed into what’s believed to be a failed utility cut on 9th Avenue between 2nd Street and 3rd Street S.W. during the morning rush.
Last month, residents in the suburban southeast community of Auburn Bay bristled as they dealt with a plague of perilous potholes that the city was unable to address due to the lingering snow.
Norton-Merrin said with the late snow quickly receding and positive signs for weather ahead, city crews are now able to be out in full force to address complaints.
City crews are also scheduled to begin their delayed spring cleanup next week.