Potholes are popping up all over Chilliwack.
The prolonged frostiness this winter has been especially hard on the roads, according to City of Chilliwack officials.
In response, they are running two road-patch crews on a full-time basis.
But it’s going to take a while.
“We have already blitzed the worst-hit areas such as Elk View Road and other roads on Ryder Lake, which have taken a real beating,” city officials told The Progress.
“There are many areas of extensive frost damage around town that are too extensive of a repair for the patch crew to deal with, so these areas will be repaired in the spring, under our road rehab and major patching programs.”
Potholes tend to erupt after moisture seeps into cracks, which expand with freezing. When the ice thaws, the broken asphalt is kicked up under vehicle traffic, forming suspension-testing potholes.
From January to March of 2017, it cost about $100,000 for pothole repairs in Chilliwack, compared to $54,000 during the same period last year.
The number of potholes fixed by city crews, from January to March 2016, was 1439. For the same period in 2017, they have repaired more than twice as many, a whopping 3362 potholes — with lots more to go.
They’re being fixed as fast as possible, after the frost stuck around in Chilliwack uncharacteristically long, more than six weeks.
Whereas in 2016, the city spent a total of about $296,000 on this type of road repair, the pothole estimate for 2017 is for about $400,000.
