Freeze and thaw cycles make potholes are a familiar sight to Terrace residents during this time of year, and city crews are spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to fill them.
From Jan. 1 to Feb. 25, the city spent $92,933 filling potholes, with nearly $44,000 of that cost being used for 50 tonnes of pothole mix.
Those figures are a decrease from last year, when wetter than average weather caused the number of potholes and associated cost to skyrocket to more than $106,000 during the same time period.
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Labour time is also down in 2022 by around 100 hours compared to the 941 labour hours in the first two months of 2021.
However, each of the last two years have marked a significant increase in city resources being dedicated to filling potholes on city streets.
“The cost has now dropped again in 2022, but in the January-February time period, we have still spent double the amount of money and close to double the amount of time repairing potholes as we did in 2020,” said Kate Lautens, city communications advisor, in an email.
Since Jan. 1, 2020, the City of Terrace has spent $621,029 filling potholes, of which around 40 per cent was spent on pothole mix. According to the city, crews are experimenting with W.R. Meadows Road Repair, EZ Street Asphalt and ATS Traffic Chipfill cold-mix asphalts to determine which is the most cost-effective and offers the best performance. Information on the results is available on the city’s new, dedicated pothole information webpage.
People in Terrace can report potholes to the public works department by calling 250-615-4021.
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