Pothole season makes its mark

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This article was published 04/04/2023 (1133 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On Gordon Avenue, near the intersection with Henderson Highway, a pothole has come to resemble a sinkhole.

The gaping crater is filled with melted snow and surrounded by raised ice. It stretches to both sides of the Winnipeg street, leaving drivers obviously confused.

Few who met it on their drive Tuesday chose to try and pass it. Rather, vehicles stopped just before it, unsure, before ducking into a nearby lane or attempting a three-point turn to avoid it entirely.

Perhaps drivers noticed a nearby licence plate laying on the street, possibly knocked off a vehicle that previously made the attempt.

Its state is frustrating for area resident Eva Kehler.

Gordon Avenue was sturdy until just a few years ago, she said Tuesday. But in the time since, the pothole situation has gotten annually worse.

“Where’s all our money go that we pay for the streets?” she said.

Her daughter is scared to drive on the road, Kehler said, adding she, too, is worried about ongoing safety — especially if snowfall forecast for overnight Tuesday hides the hole from view.

“I think everybody here feels the same.”

City of Winnipeg crews have already filled 17,683 potholes this year — nearly 3,000 more than 2022, which city spokesperson Ken Allen called a “severe” pothole season.

The additional potholes packed this year are the result of a drastically different winter: there were no potholes filled the the city in January 2022, and just 80 in February 2022 — compared to 1,760 filled in January and 3,940 in February.

It remains to be seen whether this year will see even worse street damage than the year prior, as the freeze-thaw cycle that typically causes potholes will ramp up in the coming weeks, Allen said.

“I don’t know if it’s fair to really compare this year to last year. I think that I would say that, in my view, it seems to be an average kind of a year. But we’re not through it yet and we’re going to see more potholes appearing next week.”

Data from Manitoba Public Insurance show there were 5,394 pothole-related claims in 2022 — a massive increase from 999 in 2019, 961 in 2020, and 873 in 2021.

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While there were more MPI claims in January-February 2023 compared to the year before (89 and 86 compared to 24 and 55, respectively), there were 622 claims in March 2022 and just 202 in March 2023.

Added the mix is the snow forecast to hit the city overnight Tuesday. The 15 to 25 centimetres of heavy snow anticipated is extra precipitation — and more precipitation means more potholes.

“Our crews are are multitasking big time right now. Certainly, today, we have pothole patching crews out making repairs city-wide,” Allen said.

“But if the snow comes like it’s forecast, we will quickly transition into a salting operation and potentially any kind of snow-clearing activities that might be required based on snow accumulations.”

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca

Malak Abas
Reporter

Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.

Every piece of reporting Malak 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.