Watch above: The City of Saskatoon is embarking on an aggressive street sweeping and pothole fixing blitz. Meaghan Craig tells us what areas will be tackled first.
SASKATOON – Starting on Monday, April 13, city crews will begin repairing high-traffic roadways and sweeping streets to remove the bulk of the debris off city streets as quickly as possible.
“Priority one streets will be swept at night time and the priority two streets will be swept during the day time and again that’s for the safety of the crews and motorists as well because the priority one streets are the higher density volume streets in terms of traffic and as well speed,” said Pat Hyde, director of public works for the City of Saskatoon.
Once the blitz programs are complete, approximately three weeks from Monday, then residential streets will be tackled.
“Tentatively now it’s scheduled for May 4th as a start date that again is weather dependent on what happens between now and then.”
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The city-wide sweep is expected to take six weeks.
City officials say this year’s pothole season isn’t any worse or better than any other year and potholes can pop up anywhere.
All it takes to create a crater is for water to seep through the pavement. The water builds up, softening the road base and when it freezes the ice expands pushing the pavement up. Once the water dries, the pavement then collapses under the weight of traffic which is why city officials say they heavily rely on residents to report them.
“We can’t identify every street and every pothole and when we do get the reports then we do a criteria based rating on those and we can determine which ones need to be repaired now, which ones can wait until a later date or may be even wait until we get the neighbourhood repair schedule itself,” said Hyde.
Watch below: See what it takes to make a pothole happen in a road
Residents are encouraged to report a pothole location by going online to the Report-a-Pothole map or by calling the Public Works Customer Service at (306) 975-2476.
Officials say pothole spending is part of a much larger budget but that approximately two million dollars is allocated for potholes.
Street sweeping is a $3.5 million program however not all the money is spent during this particular blitz as it has to carry through the rest of the summer.
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