‘It went viral rather quickly’
Frenchvale man posts video of Prince Street pothole issue
When Michael MacInnis posted a video of his experience driving through Prince Street in Sydney, he didn’t think it would get as much attention as it did.
MacInnis, a resident of Frenchvale, was driving to the Mayflower Mall on Saturday with his girlfriend. When they reached the section of Prince Street between Big Bens store and Ashby corner, he asked his girlfriend to take a video with a cell phone of the potholes in the area.
“I made a comment to her that this is like off-road driving,” said MacInnis. “We do off-road driving sometimes, just for fun on the back roads, and this road was so rough it was comparable to it.”
The video starts with the camera pointing down at the floor of MacInnis’ truck. As MacInnis slowly starts driving through Prince Street, he notes he’s has to put the truck in four-wheel drive, before the camera finally shows he’s driving on Prince Street and not driving off-road.
MacInnis posted the video to his Facebook page on Saturday and already it has over 70,0000 views.
“It went viral rather quickly,” laughed MacInnis. “I was just trying to be funny, I’m kinda known for just trying to be funny and I had no idea it was going to go viral.”
MacInnis knows of other roads that are in bad shape.
“I’m kind of biased because I’m from Frenchvale, but the Frenchvale Road is probably one of the worst,” he said. “In the CBRM, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything that bad (Prince Street), anybody who drives that road knows that it’s pretty much white-knuckle when you’re going through there when there’s a lot of traffic.
“With potholes it just adds all that much more danger to it — people having to swerve — it should really be re-engineered, I think, honestly, and repaved,”
On Monday, two days after the video was posted on Facebook, CBRM crew members were out fixing the potholes MacInnis had taped on his video, this coming after MacInnis’ friends shared the video with the municipality’s official Facebook page.
Shannon Kerr, communications for CBRM, said the repairs weren’t necessarily done because of MacInnis’ video.
“At this point in the year, early spring, right after the winter, when all the asphalt plants are still closed, we use the tools that we have that are available to us and we do emergency or temporary repairs,” she said.
“All throughout the winter public works crews were doing road audit in all three divisions of the CBRM and when we received calls from the public, we continued to grow that list and through that we priorities the roads,” said Kerr. “Prince Street for example was a class 1 or level one road and had high priority and so that was scheduled to be fixed for emergency pothole repairs this week.”
MacInnis happened to be driving through the area when crews were fixing the potholes. As a follow up to his previous video, MacInnis stopped and took another video, thanking the municipality for doing the fixes.
“I didn’t mean to make the video as anything negative towards CBRM or the workers, I know a few and I have a lot of respect for them,” said MacInnis. “It’s just, we pay our taxes and I find there isn’t enough work for them, there should be more work, there is a lot of work to go around and I think there could be a lot more done with what kind of taxes we’re paying in Cape Breton.”
Kerr said construction season in the municipality usually amps up in mid-May when asphalt plants open for the year.
“That’s when we really begin construction season, fixing all the roadways,” she said.
Kerr couldn’t confirm whether Prince Street would be getting full repairs this construction season, however MacInnis is encouraging it.
“They have done what they could to this point,” said MacInnis. “All they really could do was patch it, but I just hope that they can get something done with it by the summer.”
Since MacInnis posted the video he has been receiving phone calls from people asking him to take a video of their street.
“One man in Margaree is still asking me to go down and do the road between the Red Barn and the Inverness turnoff,” laughed MacInnis. “I don’t know if I’m going to do another video or not, but I feel obligated now — I don’t want to be a onehit wonder.”
For now, the municipality will continue repairing potholes. Kerr said there have been many calls, not only in the Sydney area, but across the municipality of people reporting potholes.
Anyone wanting to report a pothole is asked to call the municipality’s general inquiries line at 902-563-5180.