Bitter cold, heavy snow the ‘perfect recipe for potholes’ on Toronto roads this year
Updated: Monday, March 19, 2020 | 3:59 p.m.
Dogs on a winter doggy walk in Toronto. (Mark Blinch/Reuters)
The city’s roads are a mess.
New city budget details reveal that Toronto’s streets are so dangerous in winter that the city has no choice but to take the initiative to solve it — by building more potholes.
In the 2018-19 winter, there were a record 8.9 million potholes in Toronto, according to public documents, and the number of potholes is expected to grow by another two million by the end of next year, city records indicate.
The city’s 2018-19 budget documents show that it will have to spend roughly $1 billion on pothole repairs by the end of the 2020-21 fiscal year, and for a much larger number beyond that.
“It’s the equivalent of two full time pothole repair workers in order to get back to a healthy road surface,” said Jim Wilson, a pothole expert and former pothole repair manager with the city.
In a city struggling to get a grip on a huge backlog of potholes, this seems like a particularly grim and expensive problem.
The City of Toronto has been making pothole repairs its top priority in recent years, after spending $1.5 billion on its pothole-paving plans in 2016-17.
But since the end of that year, the city has been in the process of hiring a new pothole-paving contractor, after one of its contractors was deemed to be the most experienced in the field.
The city has since been taking a very hands-off approach to the potholes: making them right at a very slow pace, at a time when the city needs to dig in and get
