Large potholes, ones found on high speed or busy roads and in crosswalks are being fixed first.
“If we have a pothole on a crosswalk you know, that could create a trip hazard also for pedestrians, so it’s all about safety,” said Eduardo Sosa, director of Infrastructure Maintenance for the City of Edmonton.
The city provided an update on the pothole situation on Thursday.
“We have a 24/7 operation for pothole repairs,” Sosa said.
He said there are at least 20 crews each day working on potholes and that since January 1st, crews have filled 18,000 of them. Since the last update provided to CTV Edmonton on March 14, crews have filled 8,000 potholes.
“Which is a staggering number considering that we had an early spring this year,” Sosa said.
One driver said the potholes have forced him to slow down: “You gotta idle through it or you’re tearing the undercarriage out of your cars.”
“The alleys are unbelievable as well,” he added.
Officials expect to fill nearly 450,000 potholes this year. Sosa said each one costs about $10 to fix.
“On top of those dollars that we spend to do pothole repairs we actually have about $12 million more that we do more permanent to larger type of repairs.”
But Sosa said crews can’t fix the potholes if residents don’t report them to 311.
“Don’t assume that ‘Hey, somebody’s going to be calling,’ we know that potholes can be a safety hazard for motorists so phone us and we will prioritize and fix them.”
He said they get an average of 11,000 notifications about potholes each year.
“They need to be fixed,” said another driver. “We’ve had damage to our cars before from big potholes.”
The city does have a complaints department for repairs, but the woman said messages she sent went unanswered.
“We tried but it didn’t work. We just gave up.”
Ward 3 Councillor Jon Dziadyk said the city gets an average of 643 claims each year, nearly 83% of those claims were denied.
