Bad winter creates pothole backlog
Highway crews can’t keep up with intense freeze-thaw cycle
The 400 series of Ontario highways looks more like a series of bumps and road holes these days, but the transportation ministry blames the weather and says crews are working as hard as they can.
“We’ve had some very severe freeze-thaw cycles this year,” said ministry spokesperson Will MacKenzie.
Rather than set a specific budget for pothole patching, the ministry folds that expense into the long-term contracts signed with companies responsible for general maintenance of the highways in their areas.
MacKenzie said one series of storms was so intense this winter, that crews hadn’t yet finished clearing one snowfall when the one next hit, leaving no time for pothole repairs.
Even so, the contractors are patrolling the highways round the clock, every day of the week, on the lookout for heaved asphalt, road debris and other problems, MacKenzie said.
He said one 401 stretch is in especially bad shape – the eastbound lanes just west of Milton, from Kelso Lake to Guelph Line.
“We’re trying to get out there to grind off the top layer of pavement” to replace the pitted surface, he said.
“The pavement in that particular location is about 14 years old.”
But there’s an epidemic of road craters all through southern Ontario “because of the severe freeze-thaw cycles we’ve been going through,” he said.
“They’re getting out to them as quickly as they can.”
OPP Sgt. Cam Woolley said that he has also noticed the severe rash of potholes on important highways, but he chalks it up to a difficult winter.
He said he hasn’t heard of a bad accident that was caused by a pothole but “I remember one so bad it knocked the hubcaps off one of the police cars.”
In such extreme cases, the ministry crews are “pretty vigilant about making repairs quickly,” he said.
Motorists can file a complaint about a nasty pothole or general road conditions by calling 1-800-268-4686.
– By Joanna Smith of the Toronto Star