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Surrey receives 300 pothole repair requests since the start of the year

City has a budget of $1.45M for pothole repairs in 2022
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The City of Surrey has 300 service requests related to potholes since the beginning of the year. (File photo: Lauren Collins)

Not even two weeks into the year, and the City of Surrey has already received about 300 pothole repair requests.

Ray Kerr, the city’s manager of engineering operations, said the average is about 200 at this time of the year.

RELATED: Large 16 Avenue pothole causes big problems for South Surrey drivers, Jan. 7, 2022

“There’s a lot,” he noted. “It is more than what we normally receive, and a bit earlier, but you can appreciate as soon as you get cold weather in the winter, unfortunately, that’s when we get the bulk of our pothole issues.

“As soon as you get that amount of rain, and then all of a sudden it starts freezing and you get down to double-digit minuses, that’s what causes us the issues.”

But Kerr noted the city tries to get the repairs done as quickly as possible.

“Some of them are done the same day they come in. We try to get to them as quickly as we can and we have had staff working late, so they are working overtime as well.”

Kerr said the city has budgeted $1.45 million for pothole repairs – which is separate from the winter maintenance budget –for 2022.

However, he said there is “no one specific area in the city (that) is worse off than any of the others.”

Most of the complaints, he said, have been on arterial roads, but he puts that down to “the amount of vehicle traffic on those roadways, so obviously more eyes on the road you’re going to get more complaints.”

He added residents and motorists are good at letting the city know where there are problem potholes.

To report a pothole, visit my.surrey.ca.report-a-problem/home or use the MySurrey app.

Meantime, Mainroad Group, which maintains certain roads and bridges in B.C., said it will be working on pothole repairs Jan. 13 and 14.

Specifically, crews will be working on Highway 1 westbound, west of 152 Street, on Thursday (Jan. 13) from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The westbound slow lanes will be closed for the safety of the workers and drivers.

Mainroad said it will also be working on Lower Mainland highways in various areas Thursday and Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., with “rolling traffic stoppages” in effect.



Lauren Collins

About the Author: Lauren Collins

I'm a provincial reporter for Black Press Media's national team, after my journalism career took me across B.C. since I was 19 years old.
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