Edmonton pothole complaints increase amidst city app campaign

A month into a City of Edmonton campaign to report potholes on its 311 app, reports have tripled compared to this time last year.

But with added rainfall in June, the city is behind on its pothole repairs.

Todd Tretiak delivers linen rugs across the city five days a week. He's come across a lot of potholes on city streets, especially in the downtown area.

"It's severe a problem downtown here. Up and down Jasper, side streets leading from Jasper," Tretiak said. "All of them have potholes."

Michael Sands, owner of Fountain Tire's downtown location, he's also noticed a trend of customers with damage to the sidewalls of their tires, which he says is a good indication of damage caused by potholes.

"In the last six weeks we would get one or two [customers] a week [who] would come in with this kind of damage." Sands said.

"In the last little bit we've been seeing one or two a day. It was tapering off just a little bit this week, but it was happening quite often and people are quite frustrated."

For Sands, potholes along Stony Plain Road between 127th Street and 139th Street stand out.

The City of Edmonton's pothole repair rates are down this year. So far in 2019 close to 17,000 potholes have been repaired. In the same time frame last year, the city had filled close to 150,000 potholes.

"Our repair rates are down, but that's mostly due to the precipitation that we received in the month of June," said Caitlin Zerebeski, general supervisor of infrastructure maintenance with the City of Edmonton.

On June 10, the City of Edmonton launched a campaign for Edmontonians to report potholes on its 311 app to pinpoint where they're located. So far, it seems to be working.

Since June 15, the city has received 3,957 pothole notifications. In the same time period in 2018, it received 1,285.

"We're encouraging citizens of Edmonton as they do see through the potholes on the streets to report those so we can allow us to prioritize them, to get them into our system to inspect and ultimately get them repaired," Zerebeski said.

The campaign is expected to continue until Sept. 15.

Travis.mcewan@cbc.ca

@Travismcewancbc