Old Man Winter may still have one more big shot left in this near record season of bitter cold and heavy snowfalls but town work crews are braving the risk by hitting the streets in force with annual spring maintenance.
Potholes are being repaired. Streets are being swept of grit and dust, and all water and sewer lines – in excess of well over 36,000 metres -- are getting flushed.
Craig Teal, director of planning and operational maintenance, said town crews from the public works and utilities departments have been out for three weeks, in spite of any possible sudden turn from the recent balmy spring weather.
“What we are seeing coming into the spring is that it does appear we have more potholes than in the previous year,” said Teal. “The freeze-thaw cycle this year has been a little harder on the roads. When things melted some water may have gotten into the cracks and then we would dip down to minus 20. That is how it starts breaking apart.”
Potholes typically form when moisture from melting snow drips into asphalt cracks and seams and then freezes -- causing expansion in those cracks. Ground frost also pushes up and weakens asphalt.
Teal said the most challenging areas of town for potholes are in the heavily travelled streets and the older parts of town where there are more asphalt cracks in the roads for water to get in.
“The heavy traffic puts weight and drives frost into the ground and the older parts of the roads may have not been built up to as modern a standard as we use today,” said Teal. “Wherever you have a seam of old asphalt and new asphalt that can also be an area where new potholes will form as well.”
Despite the challenges this spring of fixing potholes, Teal insists the quality of workmanship from his crews is second to none in the province.
“For three weeks we find them, repair them, do the job properly and hopefully we don't have to come back to that spot,” said Teal. “If you don't properly prepare a pothole you are just guaranteeing that it's coming back next year, and it takes time to prepare the hold properly, get in enough tar, put in the material and tamp it in properly.”
The annual cost for materials to fix the town's potholes runs around $5,000 a year, not including staff time – a modest expenditure that is almost certainly noticed by many Alberta municipalities. The City of Edmonton, for example, budgeted $20 million for pothole repairs in 2013, a figure that could rise to $50 million by 2015. In the City of Red Deer's 2013 capital budget, $920,000 was allocated for its “preventive maintenance program”, with most money going to pothole repair.
“The emphasis is on maintenance, to do it right first time and move on,” said Teal.
As potholes get fixed, Innisfail's two street sweepers are also out cleaning the town's 600 lane kilometres of roads.
“We are going to go over every single lane kilometre road we have,” said Teal, adding the job has its own special challenges. “The other weekend there was still snow in the gutter but we are trying to clean up what we can.”
