Residents say city isn’t fixing potholes in north Toronto neighbourhood

TORONTO – A community in north Toronto is claiming that they’ve suffered long enough with dilapidated, dangerous roads, and some residents say the city isn’t fixing the problem.

The roads in question are Mildenhall Road and Rothmere Drive, located just steps from the Toronto French School near Lawrence Avenue and Bayview Avenue.

Potholes line the streets, and curbs are non-existent.

“We get potholes that can eat your car tires, that’s for sure. As you can see when you look around, they do get filled,” Kim Armstrong, a neighbourhood resident, said. “We’ve actually sent messages to the mayor to come and drive by our roads, but I don’t think he’s done that as of yet.”

Armstrong said that parents who are driving their children to and from the Toronto French School park their cars on the side of the roads, making it difficult for people to walk.

“As you can see, our sidewalk is level with the road. It’s very unsafe for kids walking, people walking,” she said. “The parents at the French school, they deem it their right to park on our sidewalk so you can’t go past.”

While Armstrong maintains the city does little for the road, Peter Noehammer, director of Transportation Services for the city of Toronto, said they are planning on repairing the road this summer.

“We’re actually going to undertake a ‘grind and pave’ for a particular section of Mildenhall roadway, basically to improve the ride quality for residents without materially changing the cross section or characteristic of the neighbourhood,” Noehammer said.

Potholes are created during the frequent freeze and thaw of water on the roadways over the winter.

The city, Noehammer said, begins its pothole repairs as soon as winter ends.

In March, the city’s transportation services went on a pothole blitz and fixed approximately 20,000 potholes in just a few weeks, Noehammer said.

But the area near the Toronto French School, Noehammer claimed, is ‘unique,’ and many residents do not want major roadwork.

“It’s a very unique area, it’s a very scenic area, the road is very quaint and we hear from a lot of residents that they don’t want major improvements to the roadway that would widen the road or introduce curbs and extra sidewalks,” Noehammer said.

But Rick Felton, a resident who has lived in the area for 12 years, said major roadwork is exactly what the city needs to do.

“It just gets worse every year. They try to fix the potholes, but you can see what happens, it just comes back,” Felton said. “It’s a mess. It needs to be ripped right up.”

– With files from Mark McAllister