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Councillors receiving plenty of pothole complaints

Thunder Bay auto repair shops are seeing an uptick in suspension and tire repairs
farrand-st-potholes
Water on roads such as Farrand Street complicates the task of filling potholes. This photo was taken Wednesday afternoon, shortly after a city road crew had done spot repairs with cold-mix asphalt (Submitted photo)

THUNDER BAY — At the height of the annual pothole season in Thunder Bay, it's no surprise that city councillors are getting an earful from frustrated drivers.

But the city has no control over weather conditions which this year have been particularly conducive to the formation of craters because the freeze-and-thaw cycle was exacerbated by heavy rain that was followed immediately by freezing weather in mid-February.

It's made it extremely difficult for city road crews to stay on top of the situation with cold-mix asphalt, as this is usually only a temporary fix until hot-mix asphalt becomes available when construction season arrives.

For drivers, dodging potholes to avoid damaging their vehicles is often unavoidable.

A spokesperson at Narvi's Truck & Auto Service told TBnewswatch they're doing a lot more repairs to suspension and steering mechanisms this year, and are seeing numerous cases of damaged tires — including separated tires — and rims.

He described it as "a dramatic increase" in this kind of work, and said one driver for a meal delivery service has been in about a dozen times with damaged tires. 

At Done-Rite Tire & Auto, a manager also reported an uptick in tire and suspension work. 

"Oh, for sure. Right now it's been mostly tires and rims. We've got bent and broken rims, and damaged tires. Yeah, that stuff's leading to suspension issues ... we're seeing a little bit more than we would have last year." 

Coun. Kristen Oliver is among those who has been receiving phone calls and emails about potholes.

"We are seeing some pretty nasty potholes out there," she said.

On her Facebook page this week, Oliver reported, "I have made a long list of potholes that need to be repaired and submitted it to Infrastructure and Operations. I can only report on the ones I see or where people have shared. I don’t drive up and down every street so calling the City at 625-2195 to report a pothole is the quickest way to having it addressed."

But in an interview, she expressed appreciation for what the department's staff are doing.

"I've had a discussion with the roads manager. I appreciate the work that crews are doing. The storm drains are still frozen too, so now crews are going out to try to thaw the grates out and get them open while at the same time trying to mitigate the pothole situation."

"When we're seeing the competing interests that our road crews are trying to manage through to keep the roads in a drivable condition  hats off to them because this has certainly got to be impacting them on a daily basis." 

The city's roads division is currently deploying four to six crews a day to manually fill potholes, and is also using its Python 5000 machine.

Oliver believes the proliferation of potholes is a symptom of climate change, a phenomenon that's damaging infrastructure in cities everywhere.

"We don't typically see rain in February ... I'm old enough to remember when winter time meant snow and spring meant rain. And now we are starting to see rain that's accumulating in January and February," she said.

The city's infrastructure and operations department, she said, is taking climate change into consideration now in its planning process.

"Collectively, council would love to put more money into fixing roads, but the matter before us is that we're seeing a lot of pressure from social crises that we're seeing in this community and the pressure it's putting on fire, police and EMS services," Oliver said. "That's causing us to focus in on how we address all that on top of the infrastructure gaps."

She emphasized that other municipalities throughout Ontario find themselves in the same conundrum, and said the challenge will remain unless a mechanism is put in place for sustainable funding for infrastructure upkeep. 




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