It seems we have some very pricey potholes.
A new report released by the city Tuesday showed the cost of maintaining and repairing roads in Montreal is out of whack with at least some of its counterparts in the rest of Canada.
According to performance indicators comparing Montreal, Calgary, Ottawa, Winnipeg and Toronto, we spent 150 per cent more than the median cost per kilometre last year to repair or maintain the roads.
In 2015, the city spent $25,573 per kilometre of paved road (up from $23,969 in 2014) compared with the median of $10,229 for all five cities. By contrast, Ottawa spent $11,883, Toronto spent $10,229, Winnipeg spent $10,167 and Calgary spent just $6,027.
Executive committee chairperson Pierre Desrochers said part of the reason for the comparatively high cost could be that Montreal is catching up on decades of deferred maintenance on its road network. However with all that spending, Montreal had the second lowest number of roads that were considered to be in good or very good condition, according to the report.
Desrochers said the city has to break down all its road expenses to get a better idea why the costs are so high.
“At this stage, we don’t have a breakdown of all the variables that make up this cost,” Desrochers said.
Opposition Projet Montréal’s Sylvain Ouellet said the cost of road construction and maintenance is out of control.
“How can it be that work is more expensive in Montreal and that our roads don’t last as long (as those in other cities),” Ouellet said. “There are two explanations: either collusion still exists, or the Coderre administration is incapable of managing work efficiently.”
The situation is worse when it snows, as the city spent 168 per cent more than the average last year for winter road maintenance. The city spent $15,281 per kilometre in 2015, up from $14,196 the previous year, on snow clearing, transporting snow to dump sites, and spreading salt and abrasives on roads and sidewalks. Last year, Ottawa, Toronto and Winnipeg spent close to the median cost of $5,707 per kilometre on winter maintenance, while Calgary spent just $2,491.
Among areas where the city performed well:
- Montreal’s fire department had the quickest response time at 6.67 minutes compared with 6.92 for Ottawa, 7.18 for Toronto and 8.57 for Winnipeg. Montreal also outspent those cities when it came to fire prevention activities, and it had the lowest incidence of injuries in fires per 100,000 inhabitants and the second lowest rate of fire-related deaths.
- The city also had the most affordable parking spaces, the highest use of public transit per resident and the lowest cost of water treatment per megalitre.
Areas where the city underperformed:
- Montreal had the highest cost of information technology and human resources management.
- The city spent the most on repairs to its water distribution network, perhaps due to the increased work the city is doing on preventive maintenance of its aging pipes.
Overall, the city improved on 41 out of 114 performance indicators in 2015, compared with the previous year. It also outranked the other four cities in 26 out of 122 performance indicators, and was worse than the median rank in 47 cases.
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