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Mayoral race: Better materials would help solve city's pothole problem, Melanson says

City has spent $10 million on pothole repair since 2016, candidate says
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Greater Sudbury mayoral candidate Dan Melanson says that one simple change could break the never-ending cycle of filling the same potholes on Sudbury's roads. (Matt Durnan/Sudbury.com)

Greater Sudbury mayoral candidate Dan Melanson says that one simple change could break the never ending cycle of filling the same potholes on Sudbury's roads.

Melanson held a news conference on Sept. 17 on the grounds of Laurentian University to discuss the city's pothole issue and how the problem can be addressed. The candidate chose Laurentian as the site for his conference as the school has been using different material to patch its potholes than the city uses.

"It's about 50-per-cent more expensive for this material (at Laurentian) but the lifespan is indefinite," said Melanson. "You look at the patches here and they were done years ago, then you go around to some of the patches the city has put in, you're lucky if they last a couple of hours."

Melanson says that the city has been using a cold patch material that is petroleum-based that doesn't cure properly if the surface it's being applied to contains any moisture.

"What Laurentian is using is water-based and has polymers in it. You can actually put this stuff into a hole full of water and it will displace the water and help it adhere."

According to figures gathered by Melanson, the city has spent more than $10 million repairing potholes since 2016, and despite the money being spent there is still a great deal of public outcry for something to be done.

"Throwing money into pothole maintenance that doesn't work is nothing more than a PR exercise in window dressing and a huge waste of taxpayer dollars," said Melanson in a press release.

"Had that money been spent to provide the proper material that would permanently fix a pothole, we would be able to make real progress on eliminating potholes and investing the savings into other road repairs."

Melanson says that if elected mayor, he will ensure that the use of best practices and materials are at the forefront of the city's road maintenance programs.

"The initial way we start to make a change on the potholes is to use quality materials, because the material we're using right now doesn't cut it. We're not ending up with high-quality repair as a result of the material we're currently using," said Melanson.

"There's better material out there that can be used, Laurentian has been using it for years and they have much better results than the city is getting. There's other jurisdictions like Winnipeg who are using better materials and they're getting better results."

Last winter, a few concerned citizens took it upon themselves to repair some potholes in different locations using the higher quality "perma-patch" material. Those patches are still intact today and look the same as they did last winter.

Moving forward, Melanson says that the city needs to look into acquiring some state-of-the-art equipment like the $350,000 Python 5000 Pothole Patcher that Thunder Bay has been using.

"There are municipalities in Northern Ontario that have acquired these systems as a way to be more efficient and cost effective in repairing potholes while providing a safer working environment for their employees," said Melanson. "We should be looking at acquiring this new technology for our road maintenance program and it should be deployed in a strategic manner."

The Python 5000 can repair a two-foot pothole in as little as two minutes, and requires just a single operator, rather than a crew of three or four workers.

Melanson says that when it comes to repairing potholes on Sudbury's streets, priority No. 1 is main arteries, followed by secondary roads and then residential streets. Under his ideal system, Melanson says that he wouldn't have main roads tied up with road crews causing traffic congestion.

"You would have the residential streets being done during the daytime when and during rush hour, and then in the evening after rush hour you would repair the main roads," said Melanson. "That way we're not having lanes being closed and traffic getting backed up."

Using higher-quality material to fill potholes is Melanson's first priority, before moving into new technology, though it is something that he has suggested to city staff in the past.

"I talked to the city during the last campaign about automated pothole repairs and they said 'oh we tried one and it didn't work', well that was like 12 years ago and as we all know, technology changes a lot in a couple years, or couple of months, let alone 12 years," said Melanson.

"For them to dismiss that and say 'we tried that' is faulty thinking."


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