Prince George does have terrible problems in their community with potholes… at times drivers fear they will loose a tire… you have to wonder who is the contractor who’s been responsible for paving these roads in the past? Perhaps they are not 100% up to standard and doing something to cut corners to save costs at their end for all the roads in PG to be crumbling.. .yes they have cold winters however no different than Fort Nelson, Fort St John, Burns Lake, Quesnel, and the roads in those communities aren’t crumbling anything like Prince George. Hope PG finds a solution to their problem..

Exactly ! Even though these roads will be paved this year, they will be on the list again with 2-3 years. What is up with the quality of the paving ?

Sounds like a money pit for someone.
I lived here for 51 years and I have never seen the roads this bad. They need someone to test the quality of these paving jobs. If they don’t pass the contractor should be held libel.

I don’t think the issue is the paving; I think the base of the roads is the problem.

whatever happened to the test results on a section of pavement that was tried out several years ago?
i think a young girl in town came up with the idea of mixing crushed recycled plastic to the asphalt.

Seems the problem started when the city began grinding off the top layer and placing a new layer over old instead of a complete rebuild.

Would be interesting to hear from someone in streets with actual boots on pavement.

I keep thinking that it is probably not the contractors that are cutting costs. They must be doing the job they are paid to do, or they would be sued, and the job would be re-done. It is the City themselves, cutting costs, asking for thinner, or lower quality pavement, and not wanting to fix the base. I also believe that the cheap fix is costing us more in the long run. But hey, I’m just a taxpayer, and voter. What I believe doesn’t really matter, does it, City of P.G.?

Can’t wait to hear all the reasons for our top ten finish coming from city hall.

While it is possible that a bad batch of asphalt was made paving is NOT the culprit in this case.

It is a combination of several things of which 3 stand out from the crowd first and foremost the weather, Secondly vehicle traffic and thirdly lack of proper road maintenance.

Weather can adversely affect pavement especially in fall and spring months potholes are created by water seeping down into the pavement and collecting in air pockets within and when it freezes it expands and pushes the asphalt apart creating a larger opening and eventual failure of the pavement.

Vehicles add to this problem by running over the weakened area and breaking through the surface causing the pavement to eventually break up into the classic pothole and without maintenance eventually grows in size and severity.

Lastly is road maintenance if these holes are not “patched” the problem gets worse and it will get to the point where instead of patching an area it will have to be completely resurfaced therefore increasing the cost of maintenance.

The city is well known for its lack of road maintenance and its paltry budget for road repairs and therefore have to shoulder the blame for lack of repairs to the roads.

The city has expended so much time trying to improve the downtown core and go green that it has neglected its other responsibilities. I personally don’t give a flying leap about the core nor do I give two shakes of a rats tail about going green so if we stopped sinking budget money into those 2 things guess what we would have a ton of money for road improvements and maintenance.

Let the flaming begin….

How did Ospika miss out on even an honourable mention?

I drive Westside road in Kelowna frequently; not near as bad as any of our roads mentioned! I guess they didn’t want PG to hog all the #1 spots.

Do we (city hall) get a trophy or a plaque to hang in the foyer of city hall? IMO I think the contractors will just scrape off a couple of inches of road surface, add some used motor oil and then put it back. Maybe the Real Estate Board of PG can get on the bandwagon too. After all, some streets in this town are not exactly a selling feature for a home.

Keep trying. Maybe next year?

The main reason for the condition of the roads is that the city, by its own admission, it spending half of what is required to properly maintain them.

They just spent 935 thousand dollars on a computerized maintenance system and I do not see how that investment will help as any plan they come up with is thrown out the window in the spring so they can deal with the latest crisis.

Every year they are getting further behind because of mismanagement at city hall, it is long past time to change some faces at the very top of the administration ranks.

All discretionary spending should be diverted to road repair while a plan is put in place. The only exception is other infrastructure maintenance projects.

In 2012 the city spent $1.55 Million dollars on various computer related spending. Next year a further $1.34 Million will be spent. $2,890,000.00 in TWO years for an organization with 750 odd employees. At most 500 of these people use a computer on a regular basis as part of their job so over $5780.00 per employee over two years.

I wonder if we will see a city council member on Global news making light of the condition of our roads saying ” we grow big potholes in the north” I believe Mr. Wilbur was the guilty party last year.

$600,000.00 spending from 2011-2013 to “improve energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions” in city buildings, as a result of a report from an “Energy Consultant”

Is this project more important than our roads? Someone at city hall thought so.

Total city spending for the city on new computers and computer related expenditures 2011-2015……….Get ready for it…………………..$5,685,000.00

They need all that hardware and software to track the potholes.

$5.7M is just the cap-ex spending, add to this the 200k+ per year that is spent in Microsoft license fees and day to day expenses and it is well over $7M over those 5 years.

Approximately 25% of the votes came from Prince George, and 79 roads out of the 730 nominated roads are in Prince George.
This does not look good for PG.
Hopefully, city hall wakes up and does something.

Westside road is not potholed but a narrow winding road with dropoffs and few guardrails. The main issue is the road has not been improved to match the increase in traffic.

Well, since the city won’t be paying an extra $200,000 a year to service the interest expected if we’d borrowed money to build the River Road Dyke – I don’t see how that isn’t money that was being budgeted for, and why that money now can’t go towards roads despite what Cameron Stoltz said about there being no extra money for roads.

Don’t we always tell our kids, no treats before you finish your dinner, well – no extras Prince George City Hall until you meet basic city needs, they aren’t sexy or pretty but we expect basic servicing on roads, water, sewer, garbage, recycling ( oops haven’t got that one figured out too well yet) . I am tired of doing the drunk driver weaving drive daily to avoid those potholes – and let’s face it, the term potholes is lacking in descriptive powers, we need a new term to describe these craters.

Wouldn’t it be a fine time to have a tax revolt in Prince George? Honestly I was thinking of it because I realy can’t afford any more taxes and those of you who don’t mind paying more are over paid and certainly not seniors on fixed incomes.

The street I live on was constructed in 1981. Storm sewers and sewers were put in and curbs. After it was paved the pavement was about 1 and 1/2 inches below the storm drains, so the water had a hard time draining. The pavement lasted for almost 29 years, the last five years cracks and potholes began to be a real problem.

Two years ago another fresh layer of asphalt was laid on top of the old stuff.

Now it already has fine hairline cracks all over the place! If the cracks are not sealed now (!!!) professionally with a pothole crack sealing machine and the proper hot sealant after next winter there will be the first potholes making an appearance!

Why is the pavement not lasting longer?

Keep up the great work. (Mayor & Council) Maybee next year we can take all 10 spots.

@ Prince George: your getting closer. Roads with a descent base, properly crowned, the water should run to to the curbs and gutters. Water pooling on the roads is a recipe for a pot-hole and failure. New asphalt should probably probably have its cracks sealed with tar within a season or two. However…..frost pushes the tar up and the grader doing the snow removal ultimately removes the tar crack seal. Then some person thats either inept or doesn’t care comes and smashes up your curbs pushing snow. We are fighting a losing battle…but lets give’em hell anyway.

flowermum wrote: “Well, since the city won’t be paying an extra $200,000 a year to service the interest expected if we’d borrowed money to build the River Road Dyke – I don’t see how that isn’t money that was being budgeted for, and why that money now can’t go towards roads”

The money was not going to be borrowed until the project got under way. The actual projected time is on the project information on the City web site.

Thus, the earliest time payments would have to be made would be in 2013, at which time it would have come into the budget for that year. At that time, administration and Council would be looking to see what the proposed budget looked like. We really cannot even second guess what would happen. All we know is that had the borroing been approved we would have had to pay for the payments.

Whether there were any savings elsewhere, perhaps as a result of some recommendations from the core services review, we really do not know. Given the past decade, I would not expect a tax reduction or even holding the line for a year.

However, there is no money there in the 2012 budget year from that project, since it was not planned to have an expenditure of any magnitude other than possibly the detailed desing and specification of the project to put it out to tender.

Right now, I suspect some money will have to be spent from some fund, possibly a contingency fund, to have the consultants and administration look at the matter from the point of view of “what now?”

I expect that lawyers will get involved a bit as well to once again deal with changing risk exposure as a result of this turn of events.

If something should happen as a result of a flood which could have been avoided with a dike and the City, and perhaps even the province, was found to be liable, while at the same time a plan was in place to avoid a flood and damages to property owners, it would be a difficult defense if a decision was made against an expert professional report.

“We are fighting a losing battle…but lets give’em hell anyway.”

I do not know how often one has to say that other cities in this and other countries are fighting the same battle and ar not losing it to the same extent we are.

So roads deteriorate faster than paint on the north side of a house. Construction materials deteriorate whether on buildings or on civil works. That is a given.

The better the installation and the material used, the longer they last. That is also a given.

The better the preventative maintenance programe in place, the longer the material lasts. That is also a given.

The more a material is protected from the stress of weather, whether it is dust storms, rain, sun, frost, repeated cycles of rain/sun, rain/frost, etc. the longer the material last. That too is a given.

The less structural stress, the less cycling of that structural stress from maximum to minimum, the longe the material lasts. That is another given.

Finally, and this is true for every single design problem, whether it is industrial design of furniture, kitchen appliances, cars, buildings, bridges, clothes, etc. etc., a well designed “tool” is one which is able to function properly for the purpose for which it is designed.

Once one understands that basic principle, the person responsible for the design of the item, system, etc. has no excuses. If it fails, before its expected life cycle is over, then it is as a result of a poor design.

In the case of an items such as a kitchen appliance, if it fails very early, one can often return it and it will be replaced or the money refunded, or some other agreed to compensation is made.

The PG roads, at least the arterial and collectors are failing too early after initial installation and are failing far too early after normal repaving repairs, and certain far to early after normal pot hole repairs.

We cannot return our roads to the merchant who gave us a bum bill of goods. All we can do is complain to the City who represents us as the users of the roads. They are lousy representatives.

THAT is the problem. It is extremely frustrating to some of us to realize that our representatives should be replaced. We are standing at the counter complaining, then asking for the supervisor because the poor person at the counter has not been “given the pencil” and thus has no authority to do anything.

Who is the authority? We do not need Councillors like Stolz who is famous for arguing with his citizen “customers” of why things are not possible.

We need “can do” people, not “can’t do” people.

Oh, one other thing that is a given.

An early investment in quality design, materials and workmanship in the construction business, and likely in most other businesses as well, will be repaid in spades over the lifetime of the built infrastructure.