‘They eat your tire and they wreck your alignment’: Pothole repair work underway in Toronto

Mayor Olivia Chow says repair crews are out fixing roads across the city after more potholes than usual are being reported after extreme cold temperatures.

City crews are hitting the streets of Toronto today to fill the minefield of potholes left behind by what Mayor Olivia Chow is calling a “brutal” winter, but she says the unpredictable weather is causing speedbumps.

“Nature has to give us a break. So far, it hasn’t,” she said at an unrelated news conference on Tuesday.

“If the weather is too cold, we can’t go and fix the potholes. If it’s snowing, we can’t do that, because we have to remove the snow.”

According to the city, potholes form when water penetrates the top layer of asphalt through cracks in the road. After the moisture freezes and expands, it says, sections of the pavement are forced up and the weight of vehicles on the road breaks the pavement and the asphalt is forced out.

Toronto briefly came out of a three-week deep freeze earlier this month — its longest cold-snap in more than a decade — but plunged back into bitterly-cold temperatures on Tuesday with the windchill making it feel like -24.

There’s also more snow on the way later tonight, with Environment Canada issuing a special weather statement for the city ahead of five to 10 centimetres of snow tonight, further complicating road repair efforts.

• ‘Buckle up and bundle up’: Snow arriving in Toronto on Tuesday night

Despite the less-than-ideal conditions, Chow said 29 pothole crews are out today. They’ll work to fix the craters as best they can, and time is of the essence as some of these hazards are dangerous, she said.

“There are some outrageously big ones. They eat your tire and they wreck your alignment. I personally have seen it, and some of these potholes are gigantic.”

On Reddit r/askTO, a subreddit where people submit questions about the city, more than 100 comments have been posted so far in response to the query: “Is it just me or are the potholes getting worse this year?”

“Yes, this year seems especially terrible. The very cold weather and big temperature swings are probably to blame,” wrote one user. “Much worse!!!” wrote another.

City says pothole repair requests increased this year

According to a spokesperson, the city is currently seeing a higher volume of pothole repair requests than in previous years.

Crews will temporarily patch the holes with cold mix asphalt to make the road safe, as the city says it is “extremely difficult” to work with hot asphalt in the cold weather. More permanent repairs will then be performed with hot asphalt when the warmer weather arrives.

“You just can’t get ahead of it until there’s an extended period of warmth, then we can really go at it. But having said that, they’re out there today.”

So far in 2026, the city has repaired 21,230 potholes. Last year, 257,477 potholes were filled in and Chow said that since she took office in 2023, the city is patching 78,000 more holes per year.

The city’s budget for fixing potholes in 2026 is $6.2 million. In 2025, it was $5.5 million. The city says its pothole repair budget is an estimate based on the anticipated number of potholes to be filled each year, which is determined by previous years’ performance.

Residents can report a pothole by calling 311.

Can you bill the city if your car is damaged by a pothole?

Drivers whose vehicles have been damaged by potholes, like Chow described, can file a claim against the city.

The claim must be submitted within 10 days of the incident using a Claim Submissions Web Form, with exceptions.

The city notes that is “not responsible” for the damage if it has met the province’s “Minimum Maintenance Standards for Highways in the City of Toronto,” the details of which can be found here.