It’s not even winter yet and drivers are already complaining about gravel on Calgary’s busiest thoroughfare.
Road repairs on Deerfoot Trail between Peigan Trail and Memorial Drive have left behind loose pebbles, which is battering some windshields.
“It started from there and then another one came in here,” Calgary driver Alysha Leaderhouse said, showing off a constellation of chips and cracks on her front windshield.
Many drivers are citing a common source for their latest “Deerfoot ding.”
“You want a broken windshield? Just go on the Deerfoot,” driver Jeff Davis said. “Guaranteed! That’s where – every windshield I’ve ever replaced – it’s on the Deerfoot.”
Since Sept. 17, Camracks has been conducting nightly repairs along Deerfoot Trial.
“It’s called spray patching,” Gary Brooks, division manager with Carmacks Maintenance said. “They spray an asphalt oil product in the cracks and the potholes and coat it with a seven-millimetre rock.”
Brooks said the roads were swept nightly to clean up any leftover pebbles, but the process will leave some gravel behind.
“As vehicles drive over it, the rock settles and becomes lose and therefore you get these loose stones on the highway.”
Crews expect some improvement in the coming days as the work is now complete. Speed restrictions will not be put in place.
“I wish the boys knew how to clean up a little better but they don’t – I mean there’s gravel all over the place,” Davis said.
The result is sending some to the repair shop.
“We’ll change windshields where people will leave one of our stores, they will hit an off-ramp, they get on Deerfoot, they will catch a rock, it will break their windshield and they will turn around and come back to our stores about 14 minutes later. Those are the most frustrated ones,” Brad Warren with GlassMasters Autoglass said.
Between the company’s three Calgary stores, they repair about 200 broken windshields on a busy day.
They haven’t necessarily seen an increase in repairs in recent weeks, but expect any bad breaks from the last couple of weeks will likely wind up in their shop come spring.
For many Albertans it’s simply a seasonal process, with the real gravel season just around the corner.
“If they’re not in the line of sight, I kind of just wait because it’s just going to happen again,” Leaderhouse said.
Windshield repair companies warn waiting until spring isn’t always the best method as chips and cracks can spread with changing weather conditions.
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