If the city did not waste their money on studies and other foolish things they could do real repairs to the roads. We went up Ospika last week and that was just horrible the condition of that street.
Its pretty bad when you have to use 2 lanes just to avoid the potholes.

We have quit using ospika because of its condition. There is no sense to how they are doing the pothole filling; skip one fix one seems to be the approach. That way they are quaranteed work for next week???

Why 3 crews.... Seems to me this is a priority right now judging by the amount of hub caps lying on the side of the road. Put 10 crews on this and get it done....

Scrap the cop shop and PAC and you could re-pave the whole city to Floridian standards and still have enough left over to re-do downtown. Priorities people.

I have noticed the worst areas seem to be pave overs, where new pavement has been laid over old pavement. It could be the bond between the old and new is not very adhesive and there is movement between the two layers as traffic passes over. Now water gets between the layers with freeze and thaw, bingo break up.

Pave overs may not be cheaper way to repave after all. What do the rest of you think?

our city struggles in negotiating and managing contractors/suppliers/their own employees etc. The rumour is they got burned a few times on the repaving/pothole front before.

I would assume the problem is not the shrinkage cracks which initiate potholes on parts of Ospika. It appears to be a product problem for it to fail in the manner it has. I think they need to review there QA/QC on the asphalt, and fail it, send it back to the plant if it don't meet standards.

Better yet, instead of the city crew installing the pavement. let the Contractor install it, and have them carry a five year warranty, backed by a maintenance Bond.

Filling potholes when it is cold is a huge waste of time. Putting hot pavement in a cold hole is a waste of time. Doing it too soon only means they will have to go back and fill them again.

Heck the frost isn't out of the ground yet.

Its not just the potholes. The bloody roads are a disaster. Cracked all to hell, and coming apart. This is a serious problem that will cost millions and millions to fix.

The City just cannot seem to understand that it will only get worse unless they divert money from other Capital projects, like the inane Community Energy Program to fixing our roads. We dont need millions of dollars to be spent to heat downtown buldings with water, to gain a few points in the clean air arena. This is pure hogwash. We need good, clean, safe, roads.

Its time for those at City Hall to grow up.

IMO they need a good two inch minus crush rock to fill the holes with so that its not so light that it will easily pound out, but porous enough that it will allow the water to work its way out of there. Northwood had some last year on their side road that held up well to the chip trucks for a few months. Later in the year once dry they need to fix them properly with one crew removing the surrounding area and another crew bringing in fresh pavement going a few inches thinker than the previous for a solid pad in the problem spots.

I also think we should have a better maintenance program to fix the cracks before they become problems... as well as control the runoff that allows the water to pool in places. Our roads and our maintenance are designed to fail IMO.

"the City has been exploring the idea of having its own hot mix asphalt plant, primarily because of the amount of money it is paying for hot mix over the past couple of years. The cost of asphalt can climb very high depending on the price of oil which is a key component to the asphalt mix"

What, the city can control the price of oil?
Mr. Gaal
The potentate postulating posthaste perennial pothole patching of pockmarked posthumous pathways, a person practicing
political pragmatism?
All I am saying is that it is unlikely the city would actually save money by operating their own hot mix plant.
After all, they would probably have to set up a new department staffed by new unionized hires to administer the operation and maintenance of the plant. The ongoing costs would never end, whereas
purchasing the product on a spot basis actually is the best way to control the material costs of temporarily patching potholes.
metalman.

The roads in PG are the worst of any I have ever seen.Everywhere else the roads are better than these.No more excuses it is time for heads to roll

'you could re-pave the whole city to Floridian standards"

That is the problem. Those are the standards used. The need to be using northern city standards.

"the City has been exploring the idea of having its own hot mix asphalt plant"

So how much time has city staff spent on doing this? Seems like a non-starter from the beginning.

I know that there are cities that have such plants in North America, but they are few and far between.