deachman: ottawa's quick fix for potholes ignores the larger problem
5 minute read
the pothole repair machine, the python 5000.
julie oliver
/
postmedia
have you heard about the python 5000 — the goofily named one-person pothole-patching contraption the city has been using for a few years now?
well, the city of ottawa (that’s us) says it pays about $400,000 to rent two of the machines for a couple of months each year, filling roughly one-fifth of the city’s estimated quarter-million potholes.
at first glance, this machine sounds like an engineering marvel. look how fast an efficient it is! but it also distracts us from a more pressing question: did the city say a quarter million potholes?!
ottawa has something like 6,000 km of roads, which works out to one pothole every 24 metres. that’s not a transportation network. that’s a minefield.
so the problem might not be that we can’t patch them up fast enough, but instead it may be how we’re building roads — and what we’re not checking.
let me explain: we’ve long been told that asphalt is no match for our weather’s freeze-thaw-freeze-thaw cycles, but it turns out there are those who say we’re not so powerless in the face of nature as we think.
bruce deachman measures how deep a pothole is on richmond road in 2023. bruce hit this pothole and got a flat tire.
tony caldwell
/
postmedia
for years, queen’s university professor and asphalt researcher simon hesp has argued that many roads fail early not because of climate, but because of what goes into them — and how little of it is verified.
in a nutshell, hesp says cities should test the asphalt that actually goes onto the road, and not simply rely on what’s specified in advance or trust that standards are being met. that way, he says, municipalities can ensure they’re not getting inferior asphalt that will ultimately lead to more frequent failures, more potholes, and more maintenance.
“test what comes out of the paving equipment for the correct properties,” he says. “it’s a no-brainer, isn’t it?”
but there are tests, and there are tests.
anthony simmons, construction manager with the city of kingston’s engineering department, offers an analogy even non-engineers can follow: baking a cake. you can test batter to ensure it has the right ingredients: flour, sugar, milk, eggs.
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the same applies to asphalt.
but you can also test whether those ingredients are actually doing what they’re supposed to do.
with asphalt, much of its success, or failure, comes down to the binding agent — bitumen, the sticky petroleum product that holds the rest together. its quality affects how flexible a road is and how likely it is to crack.
“testing doesn’t necessarily improve the asphalt,” says simmons. “the testing ensures that the contractors are not misbehaving.”
if contractors know the city will recover asphalt from the road and test it — and that failure could mean tearing it out at their own expense and starting over — they’ll more likely get it right.
kingston began doing that kind of testing more than a decade ago on princess street, as part of a downtown reconstruction project dubbed the big dig.
once contractors knew the asphalt would be checked after it was laid, and that failing to meet specifications could cost them dearly, the results improved.
“i haven’t seen a failed test result,” says simmons. “not one time.”
that doesn’t mean the testing is unnecessary; it means it’s working.
there are other differences in kingston’s approach. on major arteries like princess street, the city uses higher-grade materials and avoids recycled asphalt in its premium mixes — a decision not without controversy. simmons says he’s not opposed to recycling material, but argues that better systems are needed to ensure its quality.
as for how much longer a properly paved and tested road lasts, the answer isn’t exact. but the difference at least suggests that kingston is doing something right.
simmons points to two comparable roads built around the same time — one using kingston’s stricter approach, the other built using more conventional provincial standards.
the latter began cracking within about four years. the kingston road took about a decade to show similar wear.
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then there’s the cost. a standard asphalt test, simmons says, might run a few hundred dollars. the more rigorous test costs about $7,000. but on a multimillion-dollar road projects, that’s peanuts.
“but if i’m putting down $3 million worth of asphalt,” simmons says, “$7,000 or $14,000 doesn’t seem like a lot.
“if you get five more years out of a 20-year road, you’ve increased the value.”
kingston isn’t alone. other municipalities, including peel region, have begun adopting similar testing and higher acceptance criteria. and based on kingston’s experience, simmons says he can’t think of a good reason why a city wouldn’t use this kind of testing.
ottawa undertook a pavement performance study in 2017 to assess the service life of pavement under different strategies used by the city. and since amalgamation, according to erin o’neill, manager of the city’s standards and quality management branch, it has explored different paving treatments, including a current pilot project testing permeable pavements that would reduce and treat runoff water.
but it doesn’t test binder recovered from the field, noting that “the use of recovered binder testing from field or inplace asphalt for acceptance is not currently recognized by the ontario provincial standards.”
does that mean ottawa shouldn’t at least try it? road paving isn’t as sexy or voter-friendly as building a new park or swimming pool, and the savings might not be realized during a single term of council. and, of course, politicians can’t hang a plaque on a road.
a 2023 file photo of a pothole on carling avenue. the city of ottawa’s legal department reported that 40 per cent of the 808 new claims received in the first half of 2025 involved potholes.
julie oliver
/
postmedia
but there’s a fortune to potentially be saved. the city budgeted $70 million for road resurfacing this year, bringing its term of council total, according to ecology ottawa, to more than $450 million. if by adopting kingston’s approach the life of ottawa’s roads could be extended, those cost savings could help build the much-needed plaque-friendly parks and pools.
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there is, however, a wrinkle.
the province is considering changes that would standardize road-building specifications across ontario. depending on how they’re written, municipalities may need special approval to deviate — even for approaches, like kingston’s, that appear to be working.
so the window for trying something different may be narrowing. but it’s still open.
ottawa doesn’t need to overhaul its road-building program all at once. but there are opportunities to see if something else is better.
pick a stretch of bank street, much of which is already under construction and will soon need repaving. apply stricter testing. publish the results, comparing them over time with adjacent pavement built using the current practice.
because if we think the answer is patching a quarter million potholes every year —with machines like the python 5000 — the problem may not just be winter. it’s us.
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