With the snow melting en masse as the weather is finally starting to warm up, Sundre’s roads are not emerging from the past winter unscathed.
“It’s pothole season again, can we have a discussion on what you’re seeing, what you’re doing — anything specific that you want to point out?” Coun. Cheri Funke asked the municipality’s operations manager Jim Hall during the March 18 meeting.
“So, we’re going to have a lot of potholes,” Hall said bluntly, adding he has identified certain areas of concern on a map.
“Because of the capital projects that you’ve approved in the past, we’ve reduced a lot of the areas,” he told council.
However, Centre Street North and South are among the more problematic streets in terms of pervasive potholes, he said, adding the second phase of Main Avenue in front of the municipal office is expected to be ripped out and resurfaced this summer, completing the project that started last year.
“I’ll look at different cost-cutting ways to improve the intersection at Centre Street and Highway 27 because there’s a heavy turning radius. Whenever cars are doing continuous turning, it puts those forces on a 45-degree angle into the asphalt and then starts breaking that out with the fissures and the frost and heaving,” he said, adding every municipality in the province is coping with a similar situation.
“But Sundre has a lot of problems with that because underneath our asphalt is all pit run, so eventually we start to find potholes.”
The operations department goes out as soon as possible to respond to concerns, he said.
“I’m pretty close to sending guys out on-call if somebody phones in on the emergency number and says there’s a bad one in a drive lane,” he said, adding every effort is made to go out and establish which potholes are the biggest priorities.
“If it’s in a drive lane, we at least try to mark it up with pylons and signage to get people to go around it,” he said.
“And then we fix it the very next day.”
His department has recently been using a product called EZ Street that provides a temporary stopgap measure to fill potholes, he said.
“It’s not cheap…but it is easy. You pour it in and drive over it and it hardens up with wet and frost conditions,” he said.
“It works really well. We use it as a last resort.”
As for the “big, bad ones” along the Main Avenue Highway 27 corridor, Hall said he has been receiving numerous email concerns. He said motorists whose vehicles have sustained damage to rims and tires are being referred to Alberta Transportation for claims.
“It’s not our highway and jurisdiction,” he said about Highway 27.
“I cannot fix those potholes,” said Hall, adding he’s concerned there could potentially be liability issues if his department attempted to repair them.
The provincial agency responsible for highways is contacted, although their repairs do not always hold in these conditions, he said, adding signs are then installed to caution drivers until a more permanent repair can be completed.
Mayor Terry Leslie expressed gratitude for the information Hall provided, adding people are often unsure how to proceed when they spot a pothole. The mayor recommended communicating to residents who to contact depending on where the potholes are.
“Perhaps we can get something, as a communications strategy, out to the public,” said Leslie, adding not everyone can be expected to know about the differences in jurisdictions involved on Highway 27 and other streets.
Hall said the town’s emergency on-call number is 403-638-7350, which residents are largely already familiar with, but that out-of-town visitors are less likely to be aware of.
“Every day I do a schedule for snow removal, potholes, whatever’s happening,” said Hall, adding the releases he prepares include the emergency on-call number. He told the Round Up residents can call the town office at 403-638-3551 during regular hours, and that the emergency number can be reached to report problems on weekends and evenings.
Visit www.sundre.com to check on updates as they are made available.
