‘ONE FOR THE RECORD BOOKS’
Municipalities across the Lower Mainland are repairing thousands of potholes after a harsh winter
Municipalities across the Lower Mainland are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair thousands of potholes that have appeared after a particularly harsh winter.
“It was one for the record books for sure, this past winter,” said Rob Costanzo, manager of engineering operations in Surrey, where workers in three months have patched more potholes than they would normally see in an entire year.
Surrey is in good company — Coquitlam, Maple Ridge and West Vancouver have also dealt with more than their annual share of potholes. Many other municipalities are well on their way.
Potholes form when water gets into cracks in asphalt, seeps in between layers and into the ground underneath, then freezes, expanding and causing larger cracks. When the ice thaws, the weakened asphalt collapses.
Bus routes and major thoroughfares, where there is heavy traffic, are often hardest hit, though municipalities have reported potholes on all kinds of streets, from arterials to local roads.
This winter provided the perfect conditions for pothole formation.
“We had a lot more freeze and thaw than we’ve ever had before,” said Walter Oleschak, superintendent of roads and fleet for the City of Maple Ridge. “That’s usually the biggest culprit to potholes.”
Maple Ridge typically repairs 50 to 100 potholes per year, but in the first three months of 2017, crews have performed 126 temporary repairs using a cold base — this works best in wet weather — and 56 permanent repairs using a hot mix.
Maple Ridge has an asphalt repair budget of $500,000 per year, and has spent about $50,000 since Jan. 1.
Surrey has had to triple the number of crews it has working on pothole repair to deal with the thousands of potholes that have appeared. Since Dec. 5, there have been 12,000 temporary and permanent pothole repairs, compared to 3,000 over the same period a year earlier. The vast majority of those 12,000 potholes were filled in the first three months of 2017. Surrey usually repairs 9,000 potholes each year.
“We got walloped,” Costanzo said. Surrey’s annual budget for pothole repair is $1.2 million, and the city has already spent about $364,000.
Coquitlam has no specific budget for pothole repair; instead, it is included in the overall pavement maintenance budget. It has spent $93,000 on pavement maintenance so far. The city has repaired about 730 potholes over the past three months. On average, it repairs 580 per year.
There have been 95 pothole repairs in West Vancouver in 2017, compared to an average of 60 per year. West Vancouver has a pothole repair budget of $41,700, and has spent $15,000 thus far.
Most municipalities don’t have a specific budget for pothole repair, but those that do have budgets ranging from tens of thousands to more than a million. None of those that responded to Postmedia’s queries reported going over their 2017 budget.
Sand that was mixed with salt and spread on the roads to provide better traction is also making spring cleanup a more daunting task than usual. Most municipalities are sweeping up the sand as part of a regular spring street cleaning program.
Vancouver used 6,900 tonnes of sand this winter and has collected 3,127 tonnes of debris (leaves and sand) thus far. The sand collected during street sweeping is stockpiled and taken to the Vancouver Landfill for reuse or recycling.
Surrey typically uses 5,000 tonnes of salt and no sand over the course of the winter, but this year it used well over 20,000 tonnes of salt blended with more than 10,000 tonnes of sand. Cleanup began in February and will likely take months.
For the first time, Maple Ridge has three sweeping shifts per day, plus a contractor helping get rid of the sand.
The District of North Vancouver is one of the few municipalities — West Vancouver and Anmore are others — that did not use any sand this winter, just salt and/or brine.
“We would only use sand as a last resort,” Len Jensen, the district’s manager of public works, said earlier this year. “It’s just such a mess afterwards to clean it up.”