ROAD MAINTENANCE

This page was last updated in July, 2021.

Roads are the City service people interact with the most. They are also a very expensive service. This means taking care of them is important. Properly maintained roads are vital to allowing people and goods to get around our community. And not properly maintaining roads will lead to huge expenses in the future.

Because of their importance, road are something I spend a lot of time talking about. They are a frequent topic of conversation at Council. When Council talks to senior governments, infrastructure funding is one of our top priorities. And advocating for more resources to be put into roads (specifically the old bypass) has been one of my top priorities at Council.

Overall, I’m satisfied with the direction our roads are heading in. Our Council has prioritized investing in them, and we’ve got great staff overseeing these investments. However, historic under-investment in roads will take years to catch up on. Much more work still needs to be done.

This page is intended it help you understand more about this important [and expensive] City service.

On This Page

Following is information about roads in Grande Prairie. At the end of this page, I also share my view of where we need to go in the future.

Any mistakes or opinions belong to me and me alone.

Something you might notice missing from this page: any mention of snow and ice control. I have a whole other page for that here.

If you don’t want to read this whole page, you can click on section links below:

Our Road Network Today

• What Roads the City Owns

• What the City Spends on Roads

Caring for Roads

• Pothole Repair

• When Pothole Repair Isn’t Enough: Road Rehabilitation

• The Importance of Early Rehabilitation

• Deciding What Roads get Rehabilitation

• “I don’t see potholes on this road- why is it being fixed?”

• How the City is Doing at Rehabilitation

• How the City is Working to Improve

The City of Grande Prairie owns over 550 kms of roads. The best way to see what roads the City owns: by checking out the snow removal priority map.

There are two parts of road ownership worth highlighting:

• The City does not own roads within shopping and apartment complexes. When these are in need of repair, that is the responsibility of the landowner, not taxpayers.

• The old bypass is in need of major work. However, until the fall of 2019, it was owned by the province- the City could not do any improvements on it. Now that the City has ownership, it is resurfacing the old bypass. The airport - Staples was done last year, Staples - Ernies will be done this year, and Ernies - north of the City will be done next year.

Because of COVID recovering spending, the City of Grande Prairie is re-doing a huge amount of roads in 2021. It is better to look at 2020 to see what they City “typically” spends on roads.

In 2020, the City had $16,916,334 in operational spending budgeted towards our Transportation department. This money went towards programs such as snow removal, pothole repair, signal maintenance, and other regular maintenance of our transportation network. It is also responsible for our storm sewer maintenance.

The City also spends significant capital dollars on repairing roads. In 2020, there was $10,150,000 budgeted to care for existing roads. Not including one-time COVID recovery funding, that went up by $1,000,000 in 2021. This represents a 40% increase over what the road rehabilitation program received in 2017. Here’s how the money put into existing roads is changing:

In addition to the money we ordinarily spend on roads, the City is making significant investments in the old Highway 43 Bypass. Previously, it was owned by the province. The City only took it over in fall of 2019. Maintaining this road adds ~$750,000 to our operating budget. The City has also budgeted $6,000,000 each year from 2020-2022 to fix it. That money is on top of the money we ordinarily spend on existing roads and which is represented in the graph above.

Finally, Council allocated an additional $3,950,000 to road rehabilitation in 2021. This is a one-time budget addition which was meant to create economic activity coming out of COVID-19 closures. Like bypass repairs, it is over and above the budget reflected in the graph above.

To learn more about current road projects underway, you can click here to checkout the City’s Traffic Planner Map.

Freeze and thaw cycles create potholes throughout the City. Repairing them is important. Patching a pothole not only makes the road surface more derivable, but it also protects the road base. This can save big money in the long-term.

To get at potholes quickly, we rely on citizen reporting. If you notice a pothole, please report it by calling the Citizen Contact Centre at 311. The City’s goal is to respond to potholes within 24 hours of them being reported.

Worth highlighting: in 2019, Council made a major investment in pothole repair. In the past, the City purchased asphalt from third party suppliers. The problem with this: the most durable type of material (hot patch mix) isn’t available for most of the year. In 2019, we purchased a machine that allows us to manufacture our own hot patches. It also has an infrared heater to warm holes before a patch is applied. This is allowing us make pothole repairs last longer throughout the winter months.

In our climate, roads only have usable lives of about 25-30 years (source: Statistics Canada). When a road sees heavy industrial traffic, its usable life can be much shorter.

Eventually, just repairing potholes isn’t enough. A road needs to have more substantial work done. This is where our Road Rehabilitation program comes in.

There are a number of different types of ways a road can be rehabilitated. Below is a description of methods used by the City. Photos are courtesy of the City Engineering department.

Overlay

Overlay involves putting a new surface on top of an already existing road. It is used when the existing surface needs work, but everything beneath the surface is in reasonable condition. This is the most cost effective form of road rehabilitation.

Mill and Fill

Sometimes a road’s underlying structure is in good condition, but curb and gutters won’t allow the surface to be raised. In this case, the existing surface is milled away and replaced with a new surface.

Full Depth Reclamation

When a road is having troubles supporting the weight of traffic due to its base needing work, Full Depth Reclamation is the most cost effective way to repair it. This involves pulverizing the surface and a portion of material underlying it, mixing them with stabilizing agents, and pressing them into a new road surface.

Reconstruction

Sometimes a road’s base isn’t thick enough to allow for Full Depth Reclamation. In these cases, it needs to be dug out down to the sub-base and to get completely reconstructed. This is the most expensive form of road rehabilitation.

As you can see above: these rehabilitation methods come with very different costs. Compared to the cost of reconstructing a road, doing an overlay or mill and fill is relatively cheap. This makes it important to rehabilitate roads at the right time in their life cycle.

Checkout this graph (courtesy of Top Job Asphalt). It shows the speed at which roads deteriorate, and the cost to rehabilitate them.

As long as it doesn’t see too much heavy traffic, a new road will last for many years. You shouldn’t notice much of a decline in road quality for many years.

However, once the road starts having problems, its condition deteriorates quickly. This is largely because surface cracks allow water and ice to start wrecking its base.

If a road is rehabilitated just before or just as surface defects start to crop up, then often just the surface needs to be repaired.

However, if the road is left to deteriorate for a couple more years, then steps will need to be taken to also fix its base or sub base. This gets very expensive.

Here’s another useful graph looking at the condition of roads overtime (courtesy of Pavement Interactive). The blue line represents a road that is built, then left alone. The red line represents a road that receives regular maintenance, including several rehabilitations.

Once a road’s condition hits the bottom axis, a full reconstruction is needed. By doing regular maintenance and rehabilitation, the road’s life is greatly extended. Not only does this save money, but it also gives drivers a road that is better to drive on throughout its life.

It’s important for roads to receive work at appropriate times in their life-cycles.

Every year, the City inspects about 1/3 of its road network. This means that every single road gets inspected every three years.

During an inspection, three things are measured:

• Ride Quality- how smooth the road is

• Visual Condition- what the road looks like

• Structural Adequacy- how strong the road is

These measurements are combined to assign the road a “Pavement Quality Index” (PQI). A high PQI means a road is in good condition. A low PQI means it is in bad condition.

If a road gets a Pavement Quality Index of 50 or lower, then it hits the City’s “trigger.” It will go onto the list of “roads that need rehabilitation.” Engineering staff decide which triggered roads will get work in a particular year based on a variety of factors. These include:

• Where in its life-cycle a road is: will doing the work ASAP save big costs down the road?

• The amount of traffic the road receives

• Whether or not it can be rehabilitated at the same time as other nearby roads to save on costs

This is a question I often receive. People see road A getting fixed. But they notice that road A appears to be fine, and road B is in obviously worse condition. So then they wonder why road A is the one getting attention.

This often happens because road A and B are in different places in their life-cycle, and the City is working to reduce costs in the long run.

Road A might be a road that is only a decade or two old, meaning its base and sub base are in great condition. However, an inspection showed that its surface is just starting to fail. Water and ice are at risk of penetrating the surface to do structural damage beneath the road. Staff will prioritize fixing it because all it needs is a [relatively] cheap surface treatment. If that is done fast enough, then much more expensive structural work will be delayed for another decade or two.

Road B might be a road that is older, or has other challenges. Its base and sub base may need expensive work. Since that more expensive structural work needs to happen anyways, there are not significant cost savings to be realized by fixing it right away. Staff might hold off on repairing for a variety of reasons (for example: to wait to bundle it with other nearby roads to save on contracting costs).

When a road is getting fixed before it fails, that is because the City is prioritizing less expensive preventative work to prevent future very expensive reconstruction.

As described above, roads are slated for rehabilitation if their Pavement Quality Index (PQI) is 50 or less. One way to evaluate the City’s work on road maintenance: by looking at how many roads fall below this PQI trigger of 50.

It’s important to note that the City always wants to have a reasonable amount of roads slated for rehab. The reason for this: to manage road rehabilitation projects efficiently.

When road rehabilitation is undertaken, we don’t want to do small sections scattered throughout the City. This is expensive. It is also difficult for the public to plan around. Instead, we want to combine road projects: we want to do a few roads (preferably all connected) in a neighbourhood all at once. Managing projects like this requires having some sort of backlog.

We also want to have a reasonable sized backlog of roads so that we can undertake extra projects in years where prices are low. Doing so helps provide stability to our construction industry while saving taxpayers money.

In the municipal world, it is considered best practice to have a backlog of 10% - 25%. This means that, ideally, 10% - 25% of our roads would be falling below the PQI trigger at any one time.

So how is the City of Grande Prairie doing?

Right now, about 35% of City roads are backlogged. Which isn’t horrible. But also isn’t great. We have some work to do.

There is still a lot of work to be done on our road network. But we’re heading in the right direction. Some recent and current initiatives underway:

• Procurement and project management processes have been strengthened to make sure the City gets quality work from contractors

• More rigorous monitoring and prioritizing processes are in place to help repair roads before their bases fail

• Significantly more money is being put into roads now than in the past. Budget 2021 has 40% more resources for caring for existing roads than were present in Budget 2017. This is in addition to the $6,000,000 per year for 3 years budgeted towards rehabilitating the old bypass

There is still some catch-up to do on our road network. But we’re getting there.

If you have any thoughts, questions, or concerns: I’d love to hear from you. My number is 780-402-4166 and my email is dbressey@cityofgp.com.

Thanks for reading!

-Dylan