Poor roads are costing Canadians billions of dollars every year.
On Thursday, CAA hosted a virtual town hall on the importance of road repair, with a focus on practices in Belleville.
The event was held as part of CAA’s Worst Roads Campaign which invites people to nominate the worst roads in their community.
CAA’s Raymond Chan says a recently released study shows poor road maintenance and infrastructure is costing Canadians $3 billion a year.
“That’s an additional, approximately $126 per year in additional costs that’s out of the pockets of you, the people that are using our roadways. And you know, to put things into perspective as well, over an average 10-year lifespan of a vehicle, that’s about $1,250.”
The City of Belleville’s General Manager of Transportation and Operational Services, Joe Reid, also spoke saying the city spends more than $3.3 million a year on various methods to preserve local roadways.
“We spend approximately $60,000 in crack sealing, $50,000 spent towards reclamite. $300,000 is earmarked for slurry seal/micro seal. And we spend $1.6 million on surface treatment and resurfacing and $1.35 on shave and pave.”
That does not include the cost of road reconstruction projects.
Reid says preemptive work pays off.
“When we look at asset management and being proactive, spending $1 on preservation early in the life of a road will eliminate or significantly delay the spending of $6 to $10 in the same amount of rehab or construction later on.”
Chan says they use the results of the Worst Roads Campaign to show municipal and provincial governments where they should be investing in repairs.
They also use the results to get municipalities to think about coordinating projects.
“One of the big things that we hear from our CAA membership is that, you dig up the road one year, and then you have it all repaved only for a utility contractor like Bell or Rogers to come in and tear the whole roadway up two years from now. We certainly encourage municipalities to look at coordination efforts and what that looks like so it provides less disruption for our motorists out there.”
Voting in the CAA Worst Roads Campaign continues through April 18.