Edmonton works to better address need for maintenance of streetlight poles

The City of Edmonton has begun reviewing its inventory of streetlight poles in response to a 630 CHED story about one of them falling over and crashing on top of a passing motorist.

Jason Orr’s vehicle was hit on the afternoon of Oct. 22, 2017 on 109 Street at 100 Avenue.

During an executive committee debate on Monday, councillors were told by deputy city manager Doug Jones that they’re looking at an undisclosed number of poles that don’t score well on the city’s A-F ranking system.

The update came as the committee was looking at a maintenance and service agreement with EPCOR that will extend through 2018 and come up for renewal at the end of the year.

Watch below: Questions are being raised after a light pole came crashing down on 109 Street near 100 Avenue in Edmonton. Vinesh Pratap filed this report in January 2018.

2:38 Questions surface after light pole crashes down on vehicle in Edmonton

Opening things to competition is welcome news to Councillor Mike Nickel.

“Once we did some private sector comparators, we found a 10 to 30 per cent discount, and so what we’re going to be doing is we’re actually going to be opening up that contract to some other vendors,” he said.

Nickel’s frustration, however, is it’ll take a full year before a possible change can be made.

“If EPCOR isn’t cutting it up to snuff, it’s good to have some competitors out there that might want to pick up the slack.”

Rahim Karmali from city operations told the committee that the city will be able to put out to tender maintenance contracts on the 120,000 light poles in the city’s inventory.

That’s a comfort to Nickel who said the number of light poles toppling over is on the rise.

“I do remember in one particular case in 2007, when they didn’t paint the poles right in a subdivision, it was over a million dollars that cost the developer if you don’t do it right.”

Karmali said the pole on 109 Street was looked at.

“We’re looking at how we actually conduct these inspections. That particular pole was inspected on a visual basis and on the surface, there was no indication of rust. It was the rust behind that pole that caused the failure.”

As well as the streetlights, EPCOR Technologies currently looks after more than 1,300 traffic signals. They generate more than 12,000 service calls per year according to the report that was debated at the committee.

The report also said the new agreement for 2018 has a value of $63 million, which is consistent with previous years.