Scarborough pavement crumbling
Thank goodness for garbage trucks, but they shouldn’t be picking up pavement that is supposed to stick to the road.
The debate over solid waste collection and whether it can be done more efficiently by city workers or privately continues to rage, with Mayor John Tory setting the table for privatizing pickup in Scarborough.
Privatized collection is well established in the west end, where GFL has been at it since 2012, at a lower cost than with Toronto’s own trucks and workers.
Some estimates show privatization in Scarborough may cost more than using city workers, an inconvenient truth in the campaign to privatize more city services.
But on their rounds, GFL trucks have been picking up asphalt that for some reason is not adhering to the road, on Brydon Dr., right in front of a yard used to park its garbage trucks.
Moira MacSpadyen sent us a note saying that a large section of relatively new pavement is missing at the entrance to the GFL yard, near Rexdale Blvd. and Kipling Ave.
We went there and found that Brydon was paved recently, but most of the asphalt at the entrance to the GFL yard has vanished.
The constant pounding of heavy trucks going in and out of the GFL yard appears to have crumbled the pavement. Status: Rob Burlie, who’s in charge of local road operations, emailed to say “the area will be temporarily padded today to make safe and we will further investigate as it appears the asphalt has delaminated. We need to understand the failure mechanism in order that the final permanent repair is indeed permanent.” Delaminated? We had to look that up. The dictionary says it is “a mode of failure for composite materials and steel. In laminated materials, repeated cyclic stresses, impact and so on can cause layers to separate, forming a micalike structure of separate layers, with significant loss of mechanical toughness.” Sounds like another way to say the road wasn’t properly paved. What’s broken in your neighbourhood? Wherever you are in Greater Toronto, we want to know. Send an email to
jlakey@thestar.ca. Report problems and follow us on Twitter @TOStarFixer.