Pothole pilot project begins
Corruption allegations spur boroughs to seek alternatives for roads, sidewalks
Could necessity be the mother of invention when it comes to patching potholes in Montreal?
With the Charbonneau Commission airing allegations of bid-rigging and corruption in the asphalt industry, the city’s boroughs are changing the way they do business. Across the island, some boroughs are investigating new ways of filling potholes and repaving sidewalks, according to officials.
“Citizens are asking questions about how much money is being spent on potholes,” said Véronique Fournier, a Vision Montreal councillor in the Sud-Ouest borough.
Fournier was in Little Burgundy on Monday as her borough launched a pilot project to test the quality of asphalt produced by a new, made-inQuebec mobile asphalt factory.
The portable factory, which is mounted on a truck, uses mostly recycled asphalt and a solvent produced by engineers from Montreal’s École de technologie supérieure to create a type of asphalt that the borough hopes will be more effective than what it now uses.
The product has been roadtested in Cowansville, with good results, but it remains to be seen whether it can be used effectively in an urban area with higher volumes of traffic.
The pilot project is just the latest in a series of new approaches different boroughs are pioneering to alter how they do business in the light of allegations of collusion among private-sector contractors.
“This might be the solution for collusion and corruption,” Fournier speculated.
Last week, the Villeray— St-Michel—Parc-Extension borough announced it was launching a pilot project to train its blue-collar workers to repair crumbling sidewalks — altering its practice of contracting out all of its infrastructure repair work.
The previous week, the opposition Vision Montreal party raised an idea floated by the Union des municipalités du Québec that neighbouring towns should consider getting together to produce their own asphalt.
Making the asphalt on the spot as blue-collar workers stand by to fill potholes has to be the more economical choice, suggested Sébastien Lévesque, the Sud-Ouest’s director of public works.
On Monday and Tuesday, hundreds of potholes are being filled on busy streets in the borough, including Atwater and St. Jacques Sts., along with smaller streets in St-Henri and Point-StCharles.
The borough is not being billed for the cost of the pilot project, but will closely monitor the potholes being filled throughout the borough to see whether they can survive a Montreal winter and spring.
Only then will a decision be made about investing in the technology.
Quebec company PermaRoute is selling the mobile units for $150,000 each.
That does not cover the cost of the recycled asphalt or the additive that the company says seals the new asphalt with the old asphalt more effectively.
The borough discards hundreds of tonnes of asphalt each year, and would use this asphalt if it purchased the mobile units.
Lévesque acknowledged that the new technology is unproven in an urban setting and said the borough will closely monitor the recentlyfilled potholes to see how long they last.
Fournier said the borough has been looking at innovative ways to fill potholes for the past few years.
The borough contacted the company about the mobile units after reading about the successful program in Cowansville.