Tabor has become the Ospika of the past …. identical problems .. not that they were not there in the last few years, but now they are really bad. I avoid the street whenever I can remember it, but old habits die hard.

Wiebe Rd on the west of Costco has some bad ones, and Tyner as it drops down to HWY16 is bad with subsided surfaces as well as at least one manhole that will bottom the car out if hit the wrong way. I now use the left lane to avoid that.

Oh, Ospika is not quite fixed, either. Making a left hand turn onot 5th from driving south bound on Ospika, I keep as far right as possible to avoid holes on the inside of the turn.

As far as I’m concerned every road in this city is in worse than poor condition. Just wait until full blown spring. Seems strange why only Prince George has problems with the freeze thaw cycles in this province. Lets cut the road budget and build a new cop shop and dyke.

I couldn’t agree with you more Acrider. It sure is evedent that our mayor is following the same pattern that our previous mayor had set. By golly I think that even I could do that– maybe I should run for mayor–no that would be too boring.

Kamloops
http://www.newsloops.net/your-think-our-potholes-are-bad

Ottawa – a more comparable city from the point of view of freeze thaw cycles and comparable precipitation
http://www.ottawasun.com/2012/02/02/pesky-potholes-get-early-patches

Notice the comment about patching methods.

“City crews used to fill the holes with cold asphalt, a temporary fix that lasts up to FIVE days, but in recent years crews have switched to the longer-lasting solution of hot asphalt from a plant.”

I think we use cold asphalt here. Not sure. But do notice that winter patching does not hold very long.

From last year Ottawa
http://www.cp24.com/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20110308/OTT_pothole_110308?hub=OttawaHome

“March is often described as the beginning of the road crater season in the capital and mechanics say potholes can cause serious problems to the front end of vehicles.

“The best thing for people to do is to get their cars checked out,” said Albert Saikaley, a mechanic at Ottawa’s Direnzo and Saikaley Garage. “Make sure there’s nothing fallen off or broken.”

If a motorist can prove a vehicle was damaged by a pothole, the city may be required to cover repair costs.”

I like this comment below that article

Reener
“I fail to understand why asphalt/base technology hasn’t reached the levels of everything else in the 21st century. Come on, someone somewhere must have created a pavement that can withstand 60-80 degree temperature swings, and freeze-thaw cycles. I can only think this is a ploy to keep road crews employed year after year.”

A ploy, eh … LOL … reminds me of posters on here who think the City employees, in determining what work they do and how they do it, are doing it just to keep a job …. ;-)

“Seems strange why only Prince George has problems with the freeze thaw cycles in this province”

Does not seem strange to me. Figure out what causes potholes at this time of year and check BC cimate and location of the majority of the population in BC with respect to climate and you might have the answer.

Thunder Bay – similar size, similar industry (traffic), similar climate
http://www.chroniclejournal.com/editorial/letters/2011-03-17/pot-holes-aplenty-thunder-bay-roads
http://thunderbaydaily.com/2011/03/16/rough-roads

Winnipeg – a pothole reporting application for smart phones – you know you got trouble when someone has created an APP … ;-)
http://winnipeg.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20110324/wpg_potholes_app_110324/20110324/?hub=WinnipegHome
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story/2012/01/09/mb-winnipeg-potholes-january.html

Comment on the above link
“How about fixing the roads rather than filling potholes. They will just erode away within months anyway.”

A bit of an overview of the Urban infrastructure problems in the real Canada outside of Lotusland……

I agree with you gus. Ospika was only partially fixed, after City Hall was embarrassed into finding some money for it last year. It is still a mess in some areas.

If you do a patch repair it doesnt last.. we have seen it, have proven it yet the city continues with this failing project. Then they brag about how many they filled with substandard fill.

Why do the roads, which everyone uses, constantly get the short end of the budget, yet we can buy millions in property, build a new cop shop or two, buy land for a PAC that no one wants, give council a raise, and yet the roads are constantly getting worse and worse.

Green spender has done a bang up job of showing her incompetance.

I drove on Massey the other day driving by the Y.

Wow, I felt like we were travelling through Iraq or something.

There are a lot of other roads where you just have to keep a look out, but Massey, it was hard to even go the speed limit because there would be no doubt that damage to your vehicle would follow.

I just hope City council keeps the road repair budget at least at last years level. Otherwise, I think it will be another year of the roads getting worse. Last years level of repair was just good enough to keep it from getting worse nevermind making an improvement.

How can a highway maintenance crew of one person make pothole repairs that last an average of 43 months–even when the work must be done in temperatures of -25 degrees Fahrenheit? Dickinson County,
Michigan is doing just that with a self-propelled, spray-injected pothole patcher. With a self-propelled patcher, one person controls the entire pothole repair process from the cab of the truck.

The four-step process:

The hole is cleaned. A high volume blower provides a blast of air to remove loose rock and debris.
A tack coat of hot emulsion is applied to the area to be patched.
Aggregate and hot emulsion are combined with forced air and shot into the hole.
A dust coat of aggregate is applied.

Traffic can flow immediately. Follow-up studies show that repairs made with automated patchers are lasting two and three times longer than repairs made by traditional methods.

The automated pothole patcher boasts repairs that are staying in place for an average of 43 months.

Posted on here over 6 years ago …

http://www.opinion250.com/blog/view/1994

And plenty of posts on that for weeks afterwards.

Indeed, 6 years ago! And, nothing has changed! Proving once again that you can lead a horse to the water, but you sure can’t make it drink!

Perhaps city hall does`nt know these machines exist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7iOMn0n-f0&feature=related

i didnt know pothole season had ever left

Pot holes is not restricted to PG only. There were a few nasty ones in Surrey this past weekend. Also saw a few in all of the communities between here and Surrey on the weekend.
The real problem is the mild winters of the last 20 or so years. Everyone loves them, but continuously gripes about how bad the roads are in the spring. This is what happens when the temperature rises above zero in the winter months. The snow/ice melts, seeps into the cracks, freezes, lifts the cracks, snows, then snow removal.
This is something that we all have to live with in the city now that the mild winters are the norm now.

You can’t expect a patched pothole to remain that way for long. This is something I have observed for years, whether the repair is on an asphalt road, or even a gravel road. The only fix that lasts is to rebuild the base, below the pot hole. Cost prohibitive? Obviously.
The semi automated self contained machine process, using hot tar, may result in a longer lasting patch, but with vehicles driving over it hundreds and thousands of times every day, failure is inevitable.
Potholes are inevitable too, until someone comes up with a paving compound that can withstand the traffic, and will not crack under pressure, at any temperature.
Of course a properly designed and installed base is still the most important feature of any road.
metalman.

I have also noticed that how long some of the repaved roads lasts is also dependent on who repaved them. Prime example is Ospika, parts of this road was barely lasting 5 years. A stretch of 5th Ave (between Dairy Queen and Carney) has only started craking in the past year or so and it was paved over 5 years ago. Both of these roads have similar usage.
Maybe the city should consider not awarding paving contracts to certain companies where their work needs to redone every 5 years or so. Even if costs a little more up front. The savings will be recovered over the long term.

“From the start of 2012 to the end of February, the City’s Streets Division has already filled 3500 potholes, and the season is just beginning. “We aren’t even scratching the surface” says Mick Jones, Manager of the Streets Division for Prince George. Jones says a lot of the problems can be blamed on the weather “The freeze thaw cycle allows water to get into the cracks and then it wreaks havoc.””

The city is treating the symptoms with temporary medicine but not focusing on killing the disease.

The only reason they can blame the weathers freeze/thaw cycles for allowing the water to get into the cracks etc is because they do not properly if at all, do preventive maintenance on our streets.

Crack sealing during the summer/fall season. Whats that?

Our city managers allow our streets to fall apart during the summer season which creates the mess we see in the spring.

If they were competent in their jobs we wouldn’t see half the problems we have today.

It’s really sad and a crime IMO that taxpayers are “forced” to pay for city manager incompetence.

One of the other major contributors to the failure of our road surfaces are heavy trucks being allowed by city bylaws to be driven into residential areas so the drivers can go home for lunch. Heavy trucks beat the crap out of our streets and the taxpayer gets it in the end again!

IMO there are some in the city works department that are a little too close to the paving contractors and are not doing the proper follow up to see that we are getting value for money.

Poor quality control at the batch plant led to an inferior product being laid by the university turn off. They were adding oil to the pavement days after the job was supposedly finished. If this band aid results in early failure I wonder who will foot the bill.

Last year there was a 200 meter repave job done in the Haldi area that looks like it was laid during a monsoon. Did the city do an inspection via google earth or just assume it was all good and pay the invoice.

The sad thing with our new mayor and council is that after almost six straight years of increases to the budget to meet the growing need, they decided against further increases.

That means after factoring in inflation, higher costs for product (oil) and increased labour costs, there is actually going to be less done this year than last year. Sad but then again they needed $350 thousand for a study on core services and another $100 thousand to pay for council’s raise in pay so its no wonder they couldn’t increase the road budget.

The hole is cleaned. A high volume blower provides a blast of air to remove loose rock and debris.
=========================================

You missed one step PG. The highways crews also used a tiger torch to dry out the hole and then an ashpalt emulssion was placed on the perimeter of the hole for binding the mix to the pavement.

It is stupid to try and fix potholes in this spring weather when it thawes all day and at night it freezes and the patch is lifted out of the hole. And even dummer to have to count the number of holes that have been filled.

In realty this whole business of potholes is completely over blown. We live in a cold climate and unless we tear up all our pavement and rebuild it to a highways standard we will continue to have pot holes. Just slow down and try and dodge as many as you can when the traffic permits.

We have to face the fact that the brains at city hall are so involved in court procedures they don’t have the time to train those out on the road trying to give us a decent service and of course they have blown all the money on airy fairy projects to do repairs on our infrastructure.

Once again city hall is oblivious to the condition of the roads.
Photo-ops are far more important.
15 million for a so called community energy system.
Purchase of the old PG hotel.
Biggest land holder in downtown PG.
PAC working its way through the system.
Winter games the majority don’t want or care about.
Now onward and upward with a second dike along river road.
It just never ends with the gang at city hall. It just makes you puke.

and what was the Idiots Slogan “We are winter” now you can think about every Day when you drive some of the Roads!

Gonna be hard for the cops to figure out who`s drinkin and drivin and who`s just swervin to avoid pot holes ehhh???

NOTHING EVER CHANGES! It’s like ground hogs day, same sh!t different day, different year. So what’s new in Pig Gorge!

With regard to comments about poor quality re-paving jobs;
How can anyone expect a re-paved road to last in this country with our weather conditions and volume of traffic?
As far as I know, most or all of the re-paving jobs done in the city consist of milling off a couple inches of asphalt, doing the odd bit of patching, then capping it off with a new layer of asphalt.
In these cases, the base of the road is not being addressed, of course it will fail earlier than we think it should, the same damage or defects are still present, below the beautiful smooth pavement.
I don’t have the answer to a more permanent solution, other than spending mega dollars to rebuild the road, but the reasons for the recurring problems are obvious.
metalman.

Residential streets do not have any, or extremely few potholes. Our streets were paved in 1976. There are cracks, and every now and then they fill them for preventative maintenance. Water gets in, but no frost heaves which cause potholes.

Even the local collectors are in pretty good shape when it comes to potholes.

At this time of year there are often problems with manholes.

Here is an apparent solution which uses the heat of the water in the sewage pipes to keep the frost from penetrating.

http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/eng/ibp/irc/ci/volume-5-n2-1.html
“Frost damage around manholes is a common sight in many parts of the world, from the northern United States to Canada to Europe and northern Asia. When one considers the number of municipalities plagued by frost damage and the number of manholes in each, the cost of the problem can readily be seen.

“IRC’s solution, developed by researcher Otto Svec, is so simple that one could say it has been staring us in the face all these years. The simplicity lies in harnessing and utilizing the natural warmth of the water flowing through storm and sanitary sewers. The technique promotes convection, which causes warm air to rise upwards in the manhole.”

That was published in 2000.

Carck sealers, why they fail – quality control during application. 1996 technical bulletin for the industry.

http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/eng/ibp/irc/ci/volume-1-n3-17.html