Pothole patrol: city asks for help to identify craters

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/02/2025 (195 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Fed up with dodging potholes? The city wants to hear about it.

City officials are urging motorists to sink a few seconds of their day to report the craters they see in an effort to patch one of Winnipeg’s neverending problems.

Citizens can fill out a form on the city’s website, or call 311 to report. The bigger the hole, the better, as crews will be directed to fill the largest and deepest potholes that post imminent safety concerns.

Crews are already prioritizing repairs on main and bus routes and collector streets.

“We have received 37 pothole-filling requests since Friday,” a city spokesperson said in an email. “We have five daytime and three evening crews out on potholes every day (total of eight crews daily).”

The city’s return to warmer climes has led to potholes resurfacing.

“The weather this time of year makes the work tricky,” a release from the city said. “That’s because we can’t use hot asphalt to make long-lasting repairs. Instead, our crews are making temporary patches using cold mix, an asphalt mix specifically designed for use in cold, wet weather.”

Wet streets on Tuesday posed problems for holes already filled, with several the Free Press came across already washed out after recently being plugged.

Related Articles

City suffers huge bump in pothole numbers

City puts pothole-repair effort in overdrive on weather-walloped streets

Tired of waiting for city, man fills ‘dangerous’ pothole himself

City looks to AI to get a jump on potholes

City construction projects could be postponed to help fix massive amount of potholes

Province on pace to break record for pothole insurance claims

Balmy weather brings brutal roads, battered vehicles

Hole lot of trouble on Winnipeg roadways

’Lost all faith’: Nine months after reported, barricaded pothole remains on city street

Voting for worst road can get repair results

The big bangs: MPI warns about pothole-riddled roads

The city said patching efforts right now are a temporary fix, and crews may have to return to the same holes several times because of wet-weather conditions.

The city uses a cold mix to repair potholes before the summer. While it is more pliable and easier to apply in colder temperatures, cold mix is also more susceptible to being washed away by rain.

The water also causes a weaker bond between the filling material and the pothole edges, leading to a failure if the material doesn’t set properly.

Crews don’t start using hot asphalt — a more stable bond — until around mid-May, weather permitting. The hot mix is also susceptible to water weakening the bond.

“It’s difficult to predict how many potholes we see on our streets during the winter,” the city said. “It all depends on the extent of the freeze/thaw cycles or temperature swings we experience as well as how wet the roads get from melting snow.”

The city filled in an unprecedented 357,131 potholes in 2024, a rise of nearly 115,000 from the 242,362 plugged in 2023, figures show.

Manitoba Public Insurance told the Free Press late last year it had seen more than double the pothole-related claims in 2024 compared to the previous year, with 4,971 claims up to the latter half of November compared to 2,438 in the whole of 2023.

Drivers are being cautioned to slow down and adjust to the conditions, including being mindful there may be potholes along their commutes.

scott.billeck@freepress.mb.ca

Scott Billeck
Reporter

Scott Billeck is a general assignment reporter for the Free Press. A Creative Communications graduate from Red River College, Scott has more than a decade’s worth of experience covering hockey, football and global pandemics. He joined the Free Press in 2024.  Read more about Scott.

Every piece of reporting Scott produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.