Regina pothole service requests dropped by half in past five years

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Despite anecdotes of ruts, potholes and generally uneven roads in Regina, the number of service requests made to fill and fix potholes have dwindled substantially over the past five years.

Between 2018 and 2023, the number of requests per year have steadily decreased by almost half — from 1,766 to 970 according to Mike Ede, the City’ of Regina’s manager of roadway operations and maintenance,

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“We’ve been taking benefit from the recent warm temperatures in winter,” he said in a recent interview, explaining that the spate of warmer days allows crews to spend more time earlier in the year to fix up potholes before a new service request is submitted for them.

People don’t “typically” notice potholes during the winter, he explained, as they’re often covered in snow and ice, and the plows ridding the roads of excess slush don’t always scrape to the base of the road where the potholes lie.

Normally, if potholes are reported in winter, crews will temporarily patch the pothole with a cold asphalt mix with the intention to permanently repair it with a hot mix in spring and summer. However, the spate of plus-degree weather days this past winter meant that some potholes could be repaired with the hotter mix sooner, saving both workers and drivers extra work down the road.

“It was a bit of an anomaly,” Ede said. “Typically we see a lot of snow and ice and that’s when we start to see some issues.”

The warm weather, he added, also meant that crew members were able to spend more time filling up the potholes, instead of snow plowing and clearing the roads during winter.

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“A lot of people, I don’t think, realize that it’s the same crew that are plowing and clearing the roadways during the winter … they’re the ones filling the potholes,” Ede said. “We’re not bringing in separate people.”

How are pothole repairs decided?

Typically, all service requests submitted in a year are, at the very least, responded to, but the timeline to repair each pothole depends on the severity of the hole and any future construction plans slotted for the surrounding road.

“Is this (hole) going to cause someone to be hurt? Is it going to cause major damage to a piece of equipment? Is it a highly driven roadway?” Ede posited. “All of that comes into factor when we’re classifying.”

This means that some requests may get carried over into the next year, depending on how they’re classified, the exact numbers for which Ede was unable to confirm immediately. But the number of new requests submitted every year has been on a steady decline, he noted, with the exception of an increase between 2020 and 2021 due to the drastic drop in requests in the preceding year during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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While Ede said the majority of the potholes cited in submitted service requests for the year get repaired, the city does not track how potholes are actually repaired, as each hole varies in size and shape. Instead the city measures patching progress based on how much asphalt has been poured.

Ede also attributed the decline to the “strong workmanship” of the team in charge of fixing and maintaining the city’s roads.

“We’ve fine tuned how we repair the roads, the material we use, the equipment,” he said, adding that training and experience also helps staff work better. “Realistically, we’re just getting better at doing the job.”

The challenge, he says, lies in Saskatchewan’s “tough climate” and having to make do with the “freeze and thaw that wreaks havoc with the roadways and the material (used).”

“We’ve got a lot of work on hand to make sure that what we’re working with is going to work for traffic and the equipment that’s being driven on it every day,” he said.

In April, the CAA released the results for its annual Saskatchewan’s Worst Roads campaign with a list of the Top 10 worst roads in the province as nominated by residents and drivers.

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“The common safety concerns for worst, unsafe roads included potholes, poor road maintenance, poor road signs or road marking, unpaved roads, traffic congestion, no or poor cycling infrastructure, or poor transit infrastructure,” the release noted. 

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