Roads Thanks to years of chronic underfunding, the city says nearly $100 million is needed to fix crumbling streets

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Reid Southwick
Telegraph-Journal

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SAINT JOHN - Driving down Westmorland Road in Forest Hills is like trying to navigate an obstacle course.

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Noel Chenier/Telegraph-Journal

A motorist drives over broken sections of Westmorland Road near Forest Hills School. It’s a situation plenty of Saint Johners are familiar with.

Motorists routinely swerve toward the centre line - sometimes into the incoming lane - to avoid scores of potholes that are inches thick in some areas.

Vincent Hebert said he'd never seen the road in such poor condition in the 20 years he's lived in the east side neighbourhood.

A resident of Westmorland Road, Hebert said he has called the city numerous times to complain about the condition of the street and the high volume of dump trucks that drive over it, making the problem worse.

But the potholes and cracks are still there.

"Every day, I see hub caps that have flown off cars because of the road," he said. "It used to be pretty good here until the last year or so, and now dump trucks have been driving by and it's just ruined the road."

In every corner of the city, road conditions are no different, and it's a problem that will cost almost $100 million to fix.

Laden with cracks, chips and gaping holes, more than a quarter of the city's streets are in poor or worse condition and must be completely dug up and rebuilt, according to a city staff report.

Another 20 per cent must be repaved soon or further wear and tear could mean those streets would have to be rebuilt as well - a much more expensive proposition.

Road repair is a core service for municipalities, along with fire, police, water, sewage and snow removal services. And yet Saint John expects it will spend about $4.6 million this year on repaving and rebuilding streets, a little more than what it will spend on its municipal employee pension fund liability .

City staff has quietly reminded common council during budget deliberations over the last decade that roads must be repaired in a timely manner to avoid more costly reconstruction projects in the future.

Today, the total cost of bringing the city's roads to acceptable standards is almost $78.5 million.

City staff said in a recent report council should spend another $15 million on an adequate maintenance program over the next five years, pushing the total cost to $93.5 million.

"The consequence of insufficient renewal and resurfacing is seen in the deteriorating standard of many streets," Paul Groody, commissioner of municipal operations, said in the report.

A public opinion survey conducted in January found that Greater Saint John residents are not happy with the condition of the city's streets. Nearly 70 per cent said they were dissatisfied with council's performance when it came to road conditions, while only 28 per cent said they were satisfied, according to the poll, conducted by Corporate Research Associates for the Telegraph-Journal.

On the west side, Angela Sundblad recently likened road conditions to the surface of the moon, a stretch of land fraught with gaping craters.

"I come in from Grand Bay-Westfield and the highway isn't so bad," said Sundblad, a nurse who cares for an elderly man in his lower-west side home on Tower Street. "But as soon as you get to the west side, it's like driving on the bloody moon."

Pot holes and crumbling streets are a big problem in Saint John, but municipalities across the country are in a similar mess, Mayor Ivan Court insisted.

According to research compiled by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, a national lobby group, about 80 per cent of Canada's infrastructure is past its service life and the cost of replacing it is about $123 billion.

"We certainly don't have enough money to meet all the needs of all the citizens of Saint John when it comes to roads and road repair," Court said. "But we have to reinvest."

Court said the city has a finite amount of money to spread between city projects and it can manage only top priorities.

"You have to look at the funds you have, what the priority needs are and try to deal with them," Court said.

Meanwhile, cab driver John Orr said his car repair bills have tripled in the past five years or so, and he credits much of the increases to poor road conditions. Orr, who has been driving a taxi in the city for 20 years, said the roads have been getting increasingly worse.

"When I put new ball joints on my car and they last a month, that ain't good," Orr said, referring to components of his vehicle's front end.

"It's hard on me because that car is my livelihood."