Toronto city council is budgeting for the condition of roads to get noticeably worse

Lack of cash for preventative maintenance will see roads deteriorate from overall “fair” to “poor” condition, with more potholes and ruts forming.

Thestar.com
Feb. 13, 2023
David Rider

Steve Lazarevski was test driving a customer’s freshly repaired car when it hit one of Toronto’s notorious potholes.

“Next thing you know there’s a whole bunch of clunking in the front end,” said the owner of Tess Auto on St. Clair Avenue West. “I go around the block and I come back with a broken car.”

Lazarevski had to fix the damage, but he’s had a lot of practice. An increasing number of motorists are turning up with bent rims, broken ball joints, busted shocks and other evidence of a road network steadily and predictably decaying.

“Shocks in particular have been leaking like crazy recently,” he said. “The roads are not the greatest and your suspension is taking everything.”

City council is set to pass a 2023 spending blueprint Wednesday that budgets for a noticeable long-term decline in road quality, from “fair” to “poor” condition.

“At current funding levels, only around one-third of the rehabilitation needs for major and local roads can be addressed,” according to budget documents. The city is spending billions of dollars to maintain roads and bridges over the next decade but needs another $2.7 billion for an ideal “state of good repair” program.

Pothole near Steeles Ave. in Toronto, Feb. 11.

Mark Berkovitz leads a city team that tracks the state of the road network, helping co-ordinate resurfacing and other maintenance that determines if commuters get a silky smooth glide or a teeth-rattling adventure.

Berkovitz said the city doesn’t have enough cash to pay for ideal maintenance of the infrastructure “so it’s deteriorating faster than we can reinvest in it,” he said.

“Even though the city does the day-to-day filling of potholes … there’ll be more patches on the roads, because there’ll be more potholes that form that we will need to fill. There will be more frequent cracks on the roads.”

For motorists, that will mean rougher rides and more repairs. For cyclists, that means more potentially dangerous ruts, ridges and hollows.

“I’ve really seen the roads get worse and worse,” said Florian François, an actor and writer who lives in midtown and gets around primarily by bike.

“I know if I’m not paying really close attention, I could get knocked off my bike. I sometimes fear for my safety. It feels like a symptom of an underfunded city.”

A city staff budget note said the “overall condition” of major and local roads is considered “fair,” although major roads are in slightly worse shape.

Fair condition, according to experts, means the possibility of cracks, ruts or potholes, including ones that could damage vehicles. Drivers might have to slow down a bit for a comfortable, safe ride.

The quality will soon nosedive, thanks to a long-term trend made worse by pandemic costs that have forced the city to reduce and delay roadwork rather than reduce front-line services, such as libraries and recreation centres.

City staff predict the overall condition of the busiest roads, including major and minor arterials, will worsen to “poor” by 2024. That means more visible potholes, cracks and ruts. Driving the speed limit could be uncomfortably rough, with increased chances the road will damage tires and rims.

Local roads, which get less traffic from big trucks and other heavy vehicles that do the most damage to roads, are predicted to decline to “poor” status by 2036.

Berkovitz said the shortfall in state-of-good-repair funding has long been rising with the age of Toronto’s infrastructure, much of it built between the 1950s and 1970s and increasingly needing attention.

The exception is the Gardiner Expressway. Its rehabilitation, including the elevated eastern curve that is being rebuilt and relocated, is set to get $1.9 billion in work by 2032, virtually eliminating the state-of-good-repair backlog on just that roadway.

Teresa Di Felice, an assistant vice-president for CAA in south-central Ontario, said “every tool in the tool box needs to be pulled in order to see what can be done,” to get Toronto off the highway to pothole hell.

CAA publishes an annual list of Ontario’s 10 worst roads. Last year four of them -- Eglinton Avenue West, Eglinton Avenue East, Lake Shore Boulevard East and Finch Avenue West -- were in Toronto.

The cost of bad roads goes beyond sore butts. The city paid motorists about $924,000 in compensation for vehicle damage in 2019. The total payout dipped dramatically during the pandemic but has started to rise with traffic levels.

For professional drivers, there could be health impacts. A study of Hamilton’s buses found the roughest rides exceeded international standards for vibrations as drivers complain about carpal tunnel and other strain injuries.

John Tory, asked about the gloomy road outlook before he announced he is resigning as mayor over an inappropriate relationship, stressed that city staff does a “Herculean” job filling potholes -- the first blitz of 2023 started Saturday -- and what’s at stake are treatments that prevent such problems in the first place.

The city had started to boost infrastructure investment before COVID-19 ravaged the city’s finances. But the proposed 2023 budget has a $1.3-billion hole that Tory has said needs to be filled by the provincial and federal governments.

“We decided to not cut front-line services because we didn’t think that people should be having to wait longer, or not get a city service,” he said, opting instead to push back capital projects.

Tory was correct to point the finger at the provincial and federal governments, said Scott Butler, executive director of Good Roads, a municipal association with members including Toronto.

“I think councils in every corner of the province, in every region of the province are facing this,” Butler said. “In fact, Toronto’s situation, as dire as it may look in the information being shared with council, is pretty average.

“Municipalities provide an inordinate amount of front-line services to constituents, but they’re doing that on eight cents out of every tax dollar collected.

“Even a city of Toronto’s size, with the authorities given to it under the City of Toronto Act, is still handcuffed by the fiscal arrangement that exists between the three layers of government.”

For Toronto, which has extra costs including social housing and shelter for refugee claimants, that forces council to prioritize immediate services for people versus the long-term health of our roads.

James Smith, Good Roads’s manager of technical programs and research, said municipalities are trying innovations to keep streets in good shape longer. But studies show the big long-term payoff is the kind of early maintenance that is being postponed into the future due to lack of funds.

The budget crunch forced the city to postpone projects that were scheduled for last year. City officials were unable to provide a list of the delayed work.

As bumpy as the road ahead looks for Toronto motorists and cyclists, the outlook is built on expectations that other governments will rescue the city’s finances. At the moment, there is no guarantee of that.

If the money doesn’t materialize, Berkovitz said, it will be up to city council to decide if funds need to be scooped out of the road maintenance budget, creating an even deeper crater for Toronto drivers and cyclists.