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The Soapbox: An eloquent ode to our potholed roads and the vehicles that force us to use them

As D'Arcy Closs writes, we complain about the state of our roads, but the irony is the deterioration of those roadways is the inevitable result of our driving on them. A motorized Catch-22
Pothole
As D'Arcy Closs writes, we complain about the state of our roads, but the irony is the deterioration of those roadways is the inevitable result of our driving on them.

Pot-holed, par-boiled, pitted, pitiable. Lumpy, bumpy, cratered, cracked. A frozen fricassee covered in the thick white sauce of winter snow before that hibernation ends with a subterranean heave-ho. Spring’s surge and sink, a sure sign of which are the pot-hole crews hitting the roads to fill up each crater and fill in each crack. 

The work is Sisyphus’, and like that doomed figure of Greek myth, they perhaps serve a punishment for our self-aggrandizing craftiness (our invention of the paved road) and deceitfulness (to ourselves of our cars’ necessity). And so we ride the roads, jagging and zagging to avoid their thawed flaws. Do we have a choice? If you’re living in one of Sudbury’s satellite townships, you really have very little. Subway? No way. Go Train? Go fish. At best you can hop on the bus, Gus, no need to discuss much.

And so we drive off on ruined roads where it becomes all too clear that any happiness and fulfillment to be gained from driving our automobiles will have to wait (unlike the pressing driver behind us) until we are off these rocky roads and our automotive investments parked.

The desire to see better roads is inextricably linked to our desire to gain satisfaction from our automobiles, which we’re told have so much promise: freedom and autonomy for any who can afford it. How autonomous is it, though, to be in a single-file line of likeminded motorists, grimly gripping the wheel, staring at the bumper in front of us, easily irked by the tendencies of other motorists, overly sensitized to the slightest of slights, bound (though not tightly) by the rules of the road?

Even if you presently enjoy driving on a newly paved road, you’d do well to curb your enthusiasm as curb rehabilitation is likely imminent, followed by interminable sewer upgrades or mysterious bridge repairs that move along at a snail's pace.

As we wait for these repairs to be completed, it is the very weight of our prized motor vehicles that contributes to the need for these repairs in the first place. By springtime, lurking under our roads are hidden voids, created by what was once ice buildup but during a thaw becomes an absence of material, a space soon to blossom into a black hole once a heavy enough force presses down on it.

Naturally, the heavier the vehicle the more likely the road surface will sink. Sudbury, a northern community with extreme cold coupled with frequent thaws and re-freezes throughout the winter, is also home of the tandem slag truck, which are incredibly heavy vehicles when empty and impossibly weighty when full. All this conspires to make our roads more prone than most to a quick deterioration.

We can perhaps also add to the mix, the mix. Most asphalt is now blended with a certain percentage of used motor oil* (may the circle be unbroken) instead of just sand, gravel, and asphalt cement. The city of Kingston believes this is a contributing factor to their own deteriorating roads and no longer uses that kind of asphalt.

Outside of taking Kingston’s approach and paying a bit more for our asphalt, there seems little Sudburians can do. Heavy vehicles rumbling down are roads are a necessary evil in these parts. Besides making a concerted effort to invest in a better transit system, we may just have to take our lumps.

D’Arcy Closs lives in Greater Sudbury.

*Ed. note: Used motor oil was used in asphalt mixes until 2017 when failing roads prompted the provincial government to mandate a new mix for roads that did not include used motor oil as part of the recipe.


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