The
news from Quebec this week that a two metre-wide pothole in Kirkland flipped a car will sound familiar to Toronto cyclists.
Though there are no reports of potholes big enough to crash a car yet, the continual freezing and thawing we’ve experienced here over the past several weeks has resulted in a greater than average number of potholes, any one of which is plenty big enough to flip a bike.
"The last snowfall we had, it was rain in the morning, then snow, then rain again," says Trevor Tenn, the city’s manager of road operations. "Water gets in a crack in the road, it freezes, expands, and pushes the asphalt up or out. Then a car drives over it, breaks it, and creates a pothole."
Tenn says that there are as many as 40 crews with up to 100 workers on the roads last week and this, repairing as many as 3,000 potholes a day, draining water, putting in a sealant, a bonding agent called SS1, and covering them up with hot asphalt. The city reports there are an estimated 11,000 more potholes this year than average.
Crews are sent to known areas –- roads that are high on the list for resurfacing –- as well as spots called in to 311, or to
www.toronto.ca/311. The wait time is now between 3-5 days.
Tenn says that about $4 million is spent fixing 200,000 potholes annually.
Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Trevor Tenn
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