Aron Konarzewski was turning from Sturgeon Road onto St. Albert Trail when he hit a deep pothole, ripping one of his tires and unseating the other.
“I’m pretty sure the bottom of my car smacked the ground,” Konarzewski said.
The impact felt inevitable; Konarzewski said he had been on the lookout due to an influx of potholes this year and his vehicle’s small size.
“Any of these potholes could be the bane of my existence,” Konarzewski said. “I’m pothole dodging a lot out there.”
After assessing the damage, Konarzewski said he had to buy two new tires, costing him $450.
Konarzewski reached out to the City on Feb 23 to inquire about receiving a return on damages, but said he still hasn’t heard back.
“It sucks to be out that much money and just have the City completely dodge it,” Konarzewski said.
Though he filed a complaint, Konarzewski said he was never particularly hopeful for results.
“I’ve never actually heard of anybody winning one of these cases,” Konarzewski said.
St. Albert has filled more potholes in 2022 than in the previous two years, but overall has received fewer complaints, according to a senior manager.
So far this year, the City has filled 370 potholes, up from 260 in 2021 and 212 filled in 2020. However, complaints have been coming in less, with 97 received so far, compared to 144 in 2021, and 300 in 2020.
Louise Stewart, senior manager of St. Albert’s public works department, predicts that by the end of the year, the City will have filled double the potholes they saw last calendar year.
“We are seeing a lot,” Stewart said, noting the uptick in potholes has a lot to do with the extreme swings in weather this past year, with continual freezing and thawing.
Stewart said the high number of holes filled — in conjunction with the low number of complaints logged — can also be attributed to City crews working around the clock to tend to the roads by clearing snow. When crews are not snow clearing, they are spending time filling potholes, Stewart said.
Previously, the City used to have crews on five days a week, with weekends covered by overtime.
Though the City fills potholes around the clock, most of the work is done at night, Stewart said.
Pothole procedure
Potholes are filled three ways, and the technique depends on the weather, Stewart said.
Warm mix asphalt can be a permanent fix, but requires decent temperatures. The asphalt emulsion bonds to the sides of the hole in the road.
“When it’s cool out, and that hot asphalt gets cold, it just becomes a lump of hard asphalt,” Stewart said. “There’s nothing we can do with it.”
When the weather is cooler, the City uses cold mix asphalt, which Stewart described as loose asphalt that is placed in the hole and compacted when traffic drives over it. On top of being a temporary solution, this kind of fix might cause the pothole to grow as water moves into the hole and the freezing and thawing continues, Stewart said.
In 2015, the St. Albert purchased an infrared pothole repair machine, which Stewart described as a four-by-four-foot hot box that heats up the entire asphalt surface beneath it.
“You don’t even know there was a pothole there to begin with,” Stewart said, but noted this solution is much slower and is sometimes avoided in favour of keeping the roadways open and driveable.
When the City receives a pothole complaint, Stewart said it prioritizes what can be accomplished based on the time of day.
If a roadway is beginning to break down entirely, public works will bring in the City’s engineering department to assess the road, which can lead to both departments working together to replace the entire surface, Stewart said.
As for how much this year’s pothole repair has cost the City, Stewart said it’s difficult to gauge a specific dollar amount because funding for roadways contains many different services. The City’s roadway budget is $578,000, a figure that includes ditch clearing, illegal dumping pickup, gravel road work, potholes, dust abatement, and more.
Stewart noted that in previous years, roadway service and snow clearing were both seasonal budgets, swapping out for summer and winter, respectively.
Now, however, with the environment changing, the City looks at both from a yearly perspective. Savings for one service are applied to the other, and vice versa. Stewart said the City’s snow clearing budget sits at just over $3 million.
Claim success rate slim
The City of St. Albert follows the Municipal Government Act when assessing whether it will accept liability for a submitted damage claim, City spokesperson Cory Sinclair said in an email.
“As with any claim the city receives, acceptance of liability is based on whether there is negligence on behalf of the City,” Sinclair said in the email.
Sinclair said this involves determining if the City was aware of the pothole. If the City was aware, it then looks at when the pothole was reported, how many reports were received, and when the repairs were completed, Sinclair said.
“If the repairs were completed in a reasonable time and there is no other indication of negligence on the City, the claim would be denied,” Sinclair said in the email.
Since 2018, the City has only reimbursed one of the 16 pothole claims it has received in that time frame. Sinclair said the City paid the 2018 claim because it had not fixed the pothole when the road and para-ramp were being worked on. As a result, the City reimbursed the full cost of the claimant’s wheel repair.
So far this year, Sinclair said the City has received five claims — three of these were from the same spot on Feb. 10: Erin Ridge Drive at or near Ellesmere Drive.
“We actually do not get a lot of pothole claims in a year,” Sinclair said in the email. “There could have been more incidents reported, but unless the City receives an actual claim form, they will not be included in these counts.”
