More Potholes

Ideas on what to do to attract more people that wish to live in Bruderheim

By Walter Schneider

Fix potholes.  Do not cause more potholes!

To attract more families — families with children or planning to have children — to come to Bruderheim and settle here, a little extra is required.  As good as Bruderheim looks, it must and can be made to look better. 

Maybe that is what Bruderheim is doing, but one has to wonder.  A few years ago it had been decided to contract the public works department of the County of Strathcona to perform the maintenance work necessary to keep the Town's infrastructure up to par and operational.  The state of repair of all communities in the County of Strathcona is clearly visible to anyone visiting them, and it is impressively good.  It appears that Bruderheim's state and quality of repairs don't measure up to theirs and are substandard. 

The state of our streets makes a big impression on visitors.  Anyone wrecking his car or thinking that he will be better off negotiating our streets with a four-wheel drive (believe it or not, but we do have some places that are like that) is not likely to move here.  Some road repairs are being done, but that is very sporadic.  Other than tar-filling the cracks in the pavement, no regular program for maintaining the roads on a constant basis and to nip developing problems with deteriorating pavement in the bud seems to be in place.  Maybe someone would like to and will set me straight on that, but all I have to go by is the evidence at hand.

The photo shown above is of the south of the intersection of 50th St and 49th Ave.  The condition of that corner, with standing water, cracking pavement and grave impending damage is typical of a large number of street corners in Bruderheim.  The following photos will illustrate that.  I didn't take very many of those, as there is little point to photograph all of those instances.  From what I can see, that universal problem is a consequence of the way the paving of our streets was designed and done.

The photo on the right was taken at the Lutheran Church.  Just walk through the streets of Bruderheim and keep your eyes open for standing water during or after a rain.  Almost without exception the problem of developing potholes that will eventually grow into serious frost-heave problems occurs in similar locations, mostly where the gutters are that are supposed to carry run-off water across the roads.

Bruderheim has no storm sewers.  All water that runs off from rain, melting snow or even from flushing the water distribution system has to find its way into the ground somewhere or run off through our streets before it causes problems and flooding.  If any water puddles stand on the pavement anywhere, they will be standing there time and again, after every rain and after every snow melt.  That water goes somewhere.  It can't run off, therefore, unless it evaporates first, which never happens in cold or rainy weather, it runs into the ground.

It seems to me that it is very important to do something to prevent the water from standing in such places.  Correct me if I am wrong, but the recipe for big and expensive paving jobs that become major road repairs goes somewhat like this:

1. Take a good, paved road.
2. Let water stand on the pavement.
3. The water seeps into the pavement and causes cracks when it inevitably turns to ice in cold weather.
4. The water seeps into cracks that during cold days are being widened through repeated and increasing ice formation.
5. The water seeps through cracks into the compacted soil that is topped by the pavement.
6. The water freezes in the compacted soil, causing pockets of ice to form.
7. The pockets of ice weaken the compacted soil under the pavement, by melting and becoming pockets of water.
8. The pockets of water in the soil that is no longer so very well compacted will become larger and more numerous, year after year.
9. The cracking of the pavement that tops the road base that is no longer quite so firm accelerates.
10. The more the pavement cracks, and the wider the cracks grow, the more water seeps into the road base, freezes there during cold weather and accelerates the deterioration of the road base.
11. The road base eventually weakens so much that it no longer is a firm base for the pavement.
12. The pavement exerts increasing pressure on the road base, transmitting the weight of the vehicles moving over it.
13. During the spring thaw, when the ice pockets in the road base turn to water, the pressure exerted by the pavement that has to carry the vehicles driving on it is sufficiently severe that the road base with its multitude of holes filled with water turns to mud.
14. Mud is not a good support for pavement, and pavement floating on top of mud crumbles catastrophically.

(See also: Causes, consequences, prevention and repair of frost heaves, as explained and discussed by the American Concrete Pavement Association)

If that sequence of events is repeated annually for a sufficient number of years, all the tarring of cracks in the pavement will no longer be sufficient to prevent the pavement from crumbling, in effect making it necessary not only to repave the road but to reconstruct it, right from the required depth.  That will cost a lot of money we don't have.
   It's a Catch-22 situation.  Failing to be able to construct the road properly, we will be faced with having to do more and bigger repair jobs with each year, until those jobs become too expensive for the little temporary improvement in the quality of our roads they will eventually bring.  The many problems we have now began many years ago, when there were just little puddles of water on the pavement here and there.

Some effort should be spent on figuring out ways to prevent that potential disaster from happening.  In the West Woodlands subdivision there are roads that are in the final stage of deterioration, although the problem there did not begin as much with water seeping through the pavement into the road base as it did with the circumstance that the road base was put on water-saturated subsoil in essentially a swampy area with a very high water table.

If you read the following page, you can see photos of pavement wrecked through large scale frost heaves.  Repair jobs will do nothing there to solve any problems.  Those roads need to be reconstructed, if that is even possible in an area that apparently never should have been built over.   There are a few Russians in the neighbourhood.  Maybe we should talk to them.  In Russia they had a passable method for building passable roads through swampy areas.  The Russians laid down small tree trunks instead of pavement for roads that went through swamps that could not be drained.  That construction method was wide-spread in Europe during the 16th century.  Don't knock it, it worked well for many centuries.  It worked so good that it was quite common to build such roads in Canada, even in Alberta — we call them corduroy roads.  Here is a photo of one in Northern Ontario.  Not all that long ago there was one going from Athabasca Landing to Edmonton.

For good measure, and to drive home the point, the last three photos on this page show budding similar situations right in front of the office of ATB Financial.  The paving repair job that was done at the south-west corner of ATB Financial didn't work out sufficiently good. 
   Who knows why both of the problems at ATB Financial weren't fixed at the same time, but the place where fixing was done is still a problem.  Whoever did that repair job could not manage to put down enough material to prevent at least two potholes from remaining in the repaired pavement.  In the photo on the left no water shows in those two holes.  That is most likely because those holes leaked water into the road base faster than the rain at the time could supply it.  Had it rained a bit harder, the two holes would have been full of it, at least for a little while.  The photo taken June 13 of the same portion of pavement (at the right) shows just that.  Before it has a chance to evaporate, the water standing in those holes will seep into the road bed.  Right then and there the process of forming another frost heave will be at work.

Still, why was not at least an attempt made to fill-in the subsiding pavement at the intersection of 49th Ave and Queen St., just a few feet to the east (shown at left)?

It seems to me that all of us have now and then been driving past a stretch of road or highway where paving repairs were being done.  Generally, we then had a chance to observe how the paving material is being spread nice and smoothly to make sure it is even with the rest of the road surface, so that holes like those at the SW corner of ATB financial are not being created when the paving material is being tamped or rolled down.  There usually is one member of the paving crew who has a long board on a handle as on a garden rake.  Maybe the crew at the Workshop in town have such a levelling tool.  Maybe they don't (it wouldn't take much to make one — about four-foot wide).  Learn how to use it and apply it.  That will be much better for the quality of the paving repairs done on our roads.

While that is being done, maybe learn as well how to operate a broom and shovel.  All loose gravel should be removed from a hole in the pavement before new paving material is used to fill-in the hole.  While that is being learned, it would be wise to learn as well how to clean up after a patch job has been done.  Again, that requires a broom and a shovel.  You know, those two tools have no starter buttons, at least none that can be seen.  It requires determination to put them to good use, but determination and instructions to use it to do work well seem to be a bit hard to come by in our little corner of Alberta.  What will visitors think of the Town crew and their supervisors when they see all that loose gravel that is left on the road at every paving patch job?

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Next Page: Roads that can no longer be repaired

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Posted May 21, 2005
Updates:
2005 06 13 (added second photo of poor example of paving repair at ATB Financial, and added links to information on corduroy roads
2006 10 29 (reformated)