City staff repair a pothole last summer. (Alison Sandstrom/paNOW Staff)

By Ian Gustafson

bone-jarring time of year

City of P.A. begins repairing potholes, ask for public’s help identifying them

Mar 30, 2021 | 3:00 PM

The City of Prince Albert is asking for help in reporting potholes as the repairing process has already begun.

Roadways Manager Brent Kennedy told paNOW this time of year is when roads are damaged and explained they’re currently fixing them with temporary fill.

“This is the time of the year, and I would suspect with this snowfall because of all the moisture we got again there will probably be more popping up because of the moisture on the streets now,” Kennedy said.

During the process they use cold mix, which is a high oil content product used to fill the pothole temporarily until they can properly repair the road in the summer. The temporary fix also prevents further damage and sometimes is strong enough to hold the repair through the season. When it’s time to permanently fix them, they’ll use a jackhammer to cut out and fill it in, Kennedy explained.

Potholes happen when moisture, such as rain or melting ice, gets under a crack in the pavement and freezes when it’s cold, which expands the crack causing it to break. Vehicles going over the road hazard can also make it crumble and increase further in size.

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The City of P.A. is asking residents to report any issues they see using an online form. Kennedy explained they fix potholes that employees identify but having the public report things is also a big help.

“We can’t be everywhere, so we really depend on the public to call them in for us and we’ll respond to it,” he said.

Repairing the road damage is usually at least a two-person job but they can have six people out at a time on different sections. They are repaired based on the same priority route system used for snow removal.

Depending on how the winter goes Kennedy said there can be a lot to repairs but due to the work to the city’s roads in recent years the numbers of these small but potentially nasty craters are coming down.

“We really encourage people to call in those potholes for us because sometimes we don’t even know about them and if people can identify that for us, we really appreciate it,” he said.

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Ian.gustafson@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @iangustafson12