With winter’s chill poised to recede from local streets, asphalt is set to open up and offer Kelowna commuters their yearly dose of pothole problems.
Stephen Bryans, roadways operations supervisor for the City of Kelowna, said his crews are ready for what’s to come. The city refills anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000 a year, depending on what Mother Nature brings. “When it warms up and we get the freeze and thaw (cycle) that’s when we really get the potholes,” he said, adding that there’s no one area in Kelowna that is worse off, when it comes to the number potholes.
READ MORE: PLAGUED BY POTHOLES
The only place the City of Kelowna doesn’t have to worry about, is Highway 97. That’s a Ministry of Transportation issue. While there’s a lot to fix, Bryans pointed out that the city has a slick pothole fixing system in place.
“We don’t need to buy hot mix asphalt, we use recycled asphalt,” he said.
Whenever it’s time for roadwork, the asphalt left over or pulled out is saved and stockpiled.
“We store it here in the city yard and then what we do is we put it in the asphalt recyclers, and use it to fill potholes,” he said. While it’s still early, Bryans thinks that it will be a better pothole season than usual, though he doesn’t want to speculate.
This time last year his crews were working 16 hours a day to fill up all the holes that had opened up on local roads.
In the first week of February 2018, they had filled almost 700 potholes and this year has been nowhere near that.
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