Calgary crews get started on pothole repairs

Major pothole problems in Calgary The weather is much warmer and crews are now getting out fixing up the city's many, many potholes. Alesia Fieldberg reports.

The bulk of the snow from the hardest winter that Calgary has seen in recent memory is melting away, but that just means that crews will be switching their focus to repairing a multitude of potholes.

Officials say they’ve already fielded thousands of reports for an estimated 1,000 potholes on city roads. While approximately 360 have already been filled in, it doesn’t mean that the work is over yet.

Many of the reports came into Calgary’s roads department last month, but continued snowfall and frigid temperatures since then made it difficult for crews to deal with the issues.

Freezing cold weather and snow is to blame for causing many of the potholes, where snow melts into the pavement and then freezes again, cracking up the pavement and causing a hole to develop.

Drivers are taking notice of the issues on the road now that all the snow is gone.

“When you come to get off Shaganappi off of Highway 16 here, in the right lane, they’re really bad. Just about take out my front end,” said Craig Schwartz, who drove in from Cochrane. “I don’t know why, since it’s such a busy road, why they haven’t put any patches in it yet.”

Many other drivers understand why more action hasn’t been taken but hope that the city will be able to tackle all the potholes within a decent timeframe.

“It was a bad winter. I’ve noticed a lot of them getting fixed but you can only do what you can do, I guess,” said Chantal Polasek.

As the city is still working on filling potholes, drivers will need to stay cautious when they are out on the road and do their best to avoid hitting them. If you don't, you could be causing excessive damage to your vehicle.

Jimmy Waugh, manager of Kal Tire, says they've seen a 40 percent increase of people coming in to get their alignments checked out.

"Getting it done is the most important thing. Checking it, for no charge, at any Kal Tire is the best option for anyone especially with how the streets are with all the potholes out there."

One of the worst things that he's seeing when people come into his shop is control arms, ball joints and tire rod ends.

The city says the road needs to be a certain temperature for them to fill many of the holes and until the weather starts to really co-operate, they’ll be in a better position to fix things up again.

Calgary’s paving program doesn’t start until June and some areas paved over the winter may end needing to be redone, but that won’t happen until more of the major issues have been taken care of.

For more information on Calgary’s pothole repair policy, you can go to the city’s website.