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Excitement ——" Continued from page BS

should allow for compensation."

On May 3, 1989, Zucchiatti’s
claim was denied. City council did
not want to set a precedent. The
city’s Planning and Public Works
Committee noted that the Public
Works Department repaired the
pothole as soon as they were made
aware of the problem.

riving through a pothole ©
—D can cause a fair amount

of damage to your vehicle
and your chequebook. Norm
Hotmes, owner of Totem Petro-
Canada Service station sees a fair
amount of damage, caused by
potholes. "Most of the time, these
potholes around Terrace affect the
tires and rims." When a car hits a
pothole, the impact can be severe.
"It blows the side of the tire out."
Other problems may not show up
immediately. "If you throw off the
front end alignment, you might not
notice the damage for six months
or so," says Holmes. A misaligned
front end can cause uneven tire
wear over a period of time. "It’s
hard on shocks and springs, too."
Holmes is alert to the pothole
problem in Terrace. "Usually you
find those little ones — they’re
just enough to wake you up." Even
shallow potholes can cause pro-

blems for car owners, often result-.

ing in a lost hubcap. Holmes jokes
that perhaps these wayward hub-
caps could be bent and perched on
sticks to mark the offending

pothole, warning other drivers.
Don Petitpas of Terrace Trans-
mission.

agrees that driving

_ the very best.

through a pothole produces some
serious damage to vehicles. "The
first thing it does is throw the
whole car out of alignment. It tears
the hell out of the shocks." Petit-
pas notes that newer cars have
"struts" or heavy-duty shock
absorbers, which are fairly expen-
sive to replace. Driving through a
large pothole can cause enough of
a jolt to ruin a. vehicle’s struts.
"All you have to do is go through
one." .
Tires, rims, hubcaps and shocks

— there’s a price to be paid for -

every pothole you’ve ever driven
through. Add the frustrating incon-
venience and flaring tempers, and
it’s enough to make a person walk
— stepping carefully around the
potholes, of course.

How is a pothole repaired? The
process is similar to filling a dental
cavity, minus the painkillers. First,
road crews clean out the hole,
removing loose asphalt and water.
Then, the hole is simply filled with
a mix called "E.P.M.", or regular
asphalt. Gravel is used as a base
for larger, deeper holes. The
asphalt mix is rolled even with
surrounding pavement, and voila!
the offending pothole is extinct.

In May of last year, city council
approved the purchase of a Patch-
master machine, a specialized
piece of equipment which applies
a hot pothole patch, more durable
than the traditional cold patch.
With a price tag of over $86,000
dollars, it appears our potholes get

Terrace Review — Wednesday, April 10, 1991 B9

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A chat with the man who knows potholes,
and what is going to be done about them

"The number of complaints we
get is pretty minimal," says Ter-
race Director of Engineering Stew
Christensen. "This time of year, we
get the most." April rains weaken
the road base, causing potholes to
appear quickly. "When it’s raining,
they can come up in a couple of
hours."

"Asphalt in itself doesn’t have
much strength," says Christensen.
Many of Terrace’s potholes are the
result of a poor road base laid 20
years ago. At that time, focal roads
were paved over graded soil, more
economical than ihe standard
gravel base which provides better
drainage. "Most of our roads are
[built] on poor bases," says Chris-
tensen. "There’s not sufficient
drainage of the road surface."
When moisture accumulates under-
neath the asphalt, the pavement
easily gives way.

Besides this weakened base,
roads are aiso susceptible to
damage from traffic, regular and
industrial. "The amount of traffic
will make a difference, and the
heavier traffic will make a dif-
ference," says Christensen.

Once potholes appear on a street,

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the deterioration process will likely
continue. According to Christen-
sen, a street with a repaired
pothole is not as strong an unblem-
ished road, "It’s weaker." Even
using the city’s Patchmaster, which
heats the surrounding road area
and filling mix, a pothole patch
can only be as strong as the base
material underneath, With our
inferior road base, repairing
potholes is basically a band-aid
solution.

Not that our pothole repairs are
cheap. The E.P.M. mix used to fill
potholes costs about $100 a ton,
but the handling of the material
and road crew labour costs are
high.

But the city is proposing a plan
for a permanent solution to the
roadbase quality problem. A pro-
posed 25-year construction plan
has been drafted by the Public
Works Department which would
have all streets paved with proper
bases, curbed and guttered, with
ditches eliminated by the year
2016. The proposal includes the
capping of unpaved streets which
already have a good existing drain-
age base, rebuilding of all gravel
roads to a paved and curbed street
Standard and upgrading of all
streets with poor bases to a curbed
street standard. The high-volume,
paved traffic areas would have first
priority, and deteriorating paved
roads following. The proposal
anticipaics paving at least one
gravel street annually.

The city curreatly has 70 kilo-
metres of paved road and 18 kilo-
metres of gravel road. Of the
paved portion, 15 kilometres exist
without a strong base, requiring
full construction. Thirty-five kilo-
metres of paved road already has
an acceptable road base, and 15
kilometres have no base strength

whatsoever.

The cost of the proposed im-
provement plan is estimated at
$24,784,000, to be spread out over
25 years at $991,360 a year. This
would mean an average tax
increase of $100 annually for
residential homeowners. It is re-
commended that the increase in
taxes created by the paving pro-
gram be collected through a mill
rate adjustment rather than by-
frontage, resulting in the properties
generating greater volumes of
traffic paying a larger portion of
the increased tax. This reduces the
amount paid for paving by the
average homeowner and increases
the amount paid by businesses that
use streets to a greater extent and
consequently wear them down
more.

A 30-year option is also included
in the plan.

Christensen is accustomed to a
reguiar amount of good-natured
ribbing about potholes. He’s even
had ihe personal experience of
hitting a pothole on local roads,
and while driving, he is constantly
aware of road conditions. "This
morning when I came in, I noted
three potholes to my foreman."

The city has a 24-hour emer-
gency phone number for reporting
hazardous road conditions, and
according to Christensen, repair
crews are usually dispatched within
16 hours of a complaint.

But not all potholes are on city
roads, and a scan of local streets
indicates that many potholes actu-
ally exist on privately-owned
parking lots. "I guess what bothers
me is that employces get blamed
for problems they’re not tespon-
sible for, or have no control over,"
Christensen remarks.