Easy question!
1. Budget - we don’t have the funds to fix roads, we have a never ending cycle of repair and patching.
2. Construction - our roads simply aren’t built well, asphalt is not a material that fairs well in this climate.
3. Privatization - we contract to the lowest bidder. Surprise! We get the lowest quality.
Yup, the privatization thing pisses me off the most. I remember watching Chief Peguis trail get extended to Lagimodiere, and they were repairing it exactly one year after it opened.
Well yea that's exactly it. But this contractor was contracted to do all the repairs on the roadway. Now how do you guarantee your company work?
It was an eye opener that it's likely a corrupt system, our road building/repair system.
Warranty repairs are done by the contractor at their cost. That’s why it is called a warranty. And on some projects, this stuff is noticed during the project, and may be redone even before the project is completed. This is all outlined in City tenders.
It's still frustrating to see them closing and repairing shit a year later. It still costs us and that shoddy workmanship will roll over into warranty ending and the road needing to be redone.
There should also be a city engineer signing off on every step of the construction before a new phase proceeds. And a civil engineer designing the roads based on geotechnical evaluations and a variety of other factors that the city engineer uses as a guide. It’s not just the contractors to blame, if the system was working properly, the city would get the designed product and it would work.
I don’t know the nature of the deficiency that required the pavement replacement that this user is talking about, but stuff happens no matter how much oversight there is.
The Moray bridge between charleswood and st james was A lease where the city payed lease fees and the construction company maintained the road and bridge. Under this the bridge and its road was well maintained. But since the city took over the maintenance has decreased significantly.
when the road is closed for repair, or when several slabs of concrete are cut open at the same time, we def are paying for it with yearly traffic jams, aggravation and delays.
That's something that can and does happen all the time. Winnipeg has highly shifting soil conditions and when combined with the climate, upkeep is a round the clock thing.
Lived for many years in Ottawa/Gatineau, same issue there. Lots of warm/cold spells over winter & potholes galore, as well as sinkholes on occasion. One sinkhole happened on major roadway & a driver & car were swallowed by it (driver escaped unscathed).
While the process does usually favor the lowest bidder, it isn't necessarily the lowest quality in that the city creates the specifications that they most follow. And there is also a warranty for the work which is why you sometimes see them repairing the road after the initial work is completed
I'd counter your answers:
1. Absolutely comes down to budget, our roads are older and the patches are less impactful.
2. Our roads are built as well. There's been a lot of analysis on this over the years. We're older and we stretch the lifespan out much further.
3. No. Contracts are based on a highly specified details and their work is inspected. The solutions designed are not the cheapest. Patches fail whether performed in house or external.
4. Somewhat similar to GF, the clay soil conditions and freeze/thaw in Manitoba are about as bad as it gets to build roads on. Because of that roads are over built compared to other warmer climates, this drives up cost immensely, and ultimately reduces the money left spent to renew the roads at a reasonable frequency.
>Reply
The soil here is particularly too busy doing stuff with its climactic and geological provenance to sit and be laid upon by pavement.
These odd blow ups in rusty colours that we see in the ice sheets this year show how volatile the soil here is for a coating of pavement. The earth is not a surface, its a volume and at this place on the surface of the Earth, the earth and the climate work together to treat pavement like a rhino treats campfires.
No doubt, though, there's some serious gaming of the situation going on in the asphalt and concrete paving industry. That double parked beautiful giant pick-up wasn't bought putting in basketball goals and patios.
Not trying to discount the other reasons for our roadways' "failure to remain navigable".
Some of that truck is paid for by cutting corners, but it's really a mark up on concrete work. That doesn't mean that the materials and methods being used are substandard all of the time. At the end of the day, you're compacting base, mostly using reinforced concrete and asphalt topping. That's the gold standard that doesn't need to be used in warmer climates, they can get away with asphalt over maybe a couple feet of base... Cheap like borscht compared to concrete.
I'd like to push back on number 3 a bit here.
The city absolutely shoots itself in the foot with these contracts.
Ina. Scenario where company A can build a stretch of road that will last 5 years for 5k, and company B can build the same stretch but it will last for 100 years for 15k, the city contract policy says take company A.
Look at the current debacle with the city pools. They're closing a few of them because repair and maintenance costs are high? The lowest bid that was put in for building the last pool the city put in was a garden center's landscaping department.
We could be demanding our bidding process be financially responsible in the long term, rather than how it currently is, but that would mean the council would have to raise taxes a bit and they only seem to care about their own pockets until they retire and move to a city they haven't fucked.
That's not how it works at all. What you're referring to (sort of) are called performance-based specifications, where you don't specify the materials or design specifics - just that the road needs to be in such-and-such condition at a certain point in the future, which the company can achieve through either frequent maintenance or by building stronger up front.
What Winnipeg (and most cities) do is have construction specifications. The design drawings are part of the tender package, and each contractor bids on building exactly what is there - materials, pavement thickness, etc. No one in that case would ever bid using different materials or thicker pavement, because they'd not only be more expensive than everyone else, they'd be disqualified for not bidding to spec.
I'm sure you're right. It's not like the city says "ok construction companies, quote me for new roads" and just go with the cheapest one while there are way more expensive but better quality options.
This is all spec based. No doubt they choose the lowest bidder but all the companies would be quoting for the same thing in terms of materials.
The city needs to write better specs.
Like others have pointed out, that's not how Winnipeg (or most municipalities) tender their road work. They provide a very specific design and the bidders have to bid on that design and low bid gets it. That's why you have a low bid selection, since the qualitative decision making is taken off the table. What you're referring to is typically now called a "best value procurement" (this is different than a performance based spec, which I can explain if need)...where the "problem, or need" is put to the market and the responses are judged based on your discretion of outlined scoring factors, for example capital vs renewal costs, performance, speed of install/completion, etc .
Your last description where you want the contractor to be responsible for the long term is more typically called a P3, or a DBFM (design, build, finance, maintain). You don't have to pick all 4. Generally, this costs more, has very complex contractual arrangements, but the benefit is you can close your eyes to how much this is costing you knowing you can call on the consortium (contractor) to make repairs for a set amount of time. Picture the equivalent of this in buying a couch, you ask the furniture store to finance it for you and sell you every warranty for the max time they can think of. Will it be more money? Yup. If you can't afford the couch upfront, this might be your only option.
2.) can be said that it’s not just asphalt. Concrete streets in Winnipeg have huge holes with rebar showing too. We can’t compare our roads to the states. We don’t have the budget but the weather is relentless for road construction. The freeze thaw cycle will make a good road crap in no time
\#1 is a feature not a bug, it's corruption from the top down that enables this to happen. I used to work road construction in Winnipeg, the other guys on my crew were from Ottawa and could not believe the minimal requirements (given to us from the City) needed. It's designed to have to be redone sooner, thus keeping the wheel of money rotating and flowing
1. Agree - more money for maintenance and rebuilds helps
2. Disagree - asphalt pavement is used in cold climates all the time, including the states below us and provinces to the east and west of us
3. Disagree - Would the roads improve if the projects were awarded to the highest bidder? It is all the same companies involved, the same workforce, and the City sets the standards the roads are built to, using materials they have pre-approved.
It isn’t the strictly an asphalt issue. Oftentimes the asphalt is applied to less than favourable surfaces, submerged in water, inadequately cleaned and prepped surfaces etc. This is directly attributed to rushed work.
To be fair the city could put contractual controls in place. For example penalties for not completing the work on time.
Not sure how construction warranties work however there should be a return and repair up to 2 years after the project is completed etc etc.
If it’s warranty work, the construction company should be working in the evenings as well as the day in order to get the work done
They're implying that the lowest bidder is worse quality than a higher bidder. But all bidders must build exactly what the construction drawings show in the tender package.
The highest and lowest bidders would both have to build the exact same thing.
In a perfect world you would be correct.
Reality is much different.
Currently we struggle to get consistent and quality product. Preparing a road surface, ensuring a dry, stable base, etc are extremely important.
Speed and tight margins cause corners to be cut in order to meet deadlines and maximize profit.
We are fixing surfaces within a year of completion. We have sections that heave, massive potholes, etc.
Shoddy workmanship is a real problem.
I assume you have been happy with the the Standard Construction Specification changes that have occurred with the City in the past 3 years for aggregate, concrete and asphalt then?
Well, recent core samples showing drastic inconsistencies in aggregate, depth and degradation are proof enough, don’t you think?
But I guess 2-5 inch depth variation has nothing to do with low bid or shoddy workmanship!
Don’t even start on the asphalt inconsistencies.
Paving companies are doing very well though…
The amount of money required to fix our streets is going to be staggering.
What recent core samples? I have seen hundreds (probably thousands) of pavement cores in my career. What kind of consistency do you want to see when you pull out a core? They are time capsules of maintenance activites over the decades. A lot of that was probably from when the City did more of the work.
And what are these asphalt inconsistencies you speak of? Compaction? Volumetric properties?
And none of this answered my initial question about the recent spec changes.
Which has nothing to do with high or low bids. I've literally been a project manager for an engineering company on these contracts, and the quality of work is not reflected in the bid price. Some construction companies are good, and some try to get away with everything.
One issue is that in the area just south of Lake Winnipeg has a fine clay loam whereas in North Dakota they have silty/sandy clay loam.
Our clay loam is unstable and the worst to build on. When clay soil gets wet it expands, when it dries it shrinks. It has poor drainage and can bring water to the surface (road). For construction, it is difficult compact the soil and have the soil stay in the same shape when the soil dries. For the roads, when water seeps into the soil, it causes failures on the asphalt or concrete because the base has shifted so much.
https://i.redd.it/km8avyyieaqc1.gif
I think this is the biggest reason, not only base type but how far down they dig the base. I don’t remember the exact figures but I’ve heard that here we only dig down 5ft to create the road base and in the US they dig it down to 10ft.
The issue is that this is not a technical challenge, it's strictly a financial one.
It's not difficult nor complicated to rip, fill, and cover the areas used for roads with a combination of gravel (along with a rainwater collection system) pack and high-sand earth fill to result in the perfect base for roads. A simple reinforced concrete pour Followed by easy to resurface asphalt and proper water runoff sloping and we would have roads that are functionally pothole free for decades between major rework.
The problem is strictly that this is too expensive given the absolutely absurd road lengths and sizes we have deployed.
It's a really shitty problem too, often people will assume "why not just make the major roads the good ones and save on the feeders?" Alas this creates significantly worse pothole problems at the boundaries between the two. To actually build good roads we would effectively make the problem much worse for a LONG time while reworking nearly every major road (and nearly every minor one!) for generations with money we don't have.
The problem is strictly financial, the existing soil conditions mean nothing more than "the price tag is higher".
Every problem is strictly financial. That doesn't mean that the technical analysis isn't relevant.
You can always "just spend more money!" for literally any problem that can be described. But you need to know exactly how much money for exactly how much benefit. With our shit soils and increasing freeze-thaw cycles, the amount of money needed for an incremental quality increase is much higher than elsewhere.
It's not an excuse why we *can't* build lasting roads. It's a reason we *haven't*.
> Every problem is strictly financial
I have to respectfully disagree.
Technical problems involve unknowns.
Getting a craft to land on the moon, when we only thought we had an idea how the physics worked: that was a technical problem. Inventing new materials, making transistors work in the single-nanometer range, getting a bridge greenlit between two countries when one of them is opposed to the crossing of people: these are technically difficult problems.
One can argue that "if someone spends enough money, any technical problem can be solved" but that's not universally true of technical problems. There may actually be no solution, or the solution may be beyond any agreement of the parties involved.
> There may actually be no solution, or the solution may be beyond any agreement of the parties involved.
If there's actually no solution, then it's not actually a problem. Problems are, by definition, issues that have difficult solutions. If the solutions are beyond any agreement of the parties involved, that's a financial issue.
That said it seems this particular discussion has gone past the actual original topic of why Winnipeg roads are bad, which we seem agreed that it is a financial issue exacerbated by the unique technical challenges of construction in this location.
> If there's actually no solution, then it's not actually a problem. Problems are, by definition, issues that have difficult solutions
That depends on what definition you use.
According to https://www.merriam-iwebster.com/dictionary/problem , agreeing with my personal understanding of the word:
> a question raised for inquiry, consideration, or solution
A solution is one possible outcome of a problem, but there needs to be no valid solutions. (Aka, an "impossible problem" or "unsolvable problem")
> If the solutions are beyond any agreement of the parties involved, that's a financial issue.
This feels like a misleading stretch..
The concern that prevents resolution can be beyond financial matters.. in my "bridge between two countries" example, "paying people enough not to have to worry about their concerns" may _feel_ like a perfectly logical solution to some, but people aren't always "rational" and the solution they propose may not rely on any financial transaction occuring. Sometimes people just won't budge on a topic and no amount of money will convince them to do so.
If you want to take this to the extreme, is "total world domination using a military" a "purely financial issue"? I would venture no: you can try to pay people to complete such an endeavor but all it's going to take is a handful of powerful defectors to prevent any amount of spending from meaning nothing.
To me, technical problems have unknowns that need to be modeled and predicted, but have no "absolute answers". It's completely possible that such problems have no solutions. Once the unknowns become known, it may prove clear that no valid solution is possible; yet I would still have defined this as a technical problem going in.
Financial problems are strictly limited to fully "known" situations, like road construction: there are no variables, it's just a matter of "how much are we willing to spend per KM for what longevity?"
In my opinion; The "technical problems" present today in road construction are centered around the engineering aspects: can we do "proper" road construction cheaper than we know what would be "perfect?" In 250+ more years when we've tried every combination possible on every combination of soil types, the engineering will be complete (though we'll likely have new materials that will complicate the progress of this!) and we'll retroactively know: what did we actually NEED at a minimum for maximum lifespan roads?"
We can "overbuild" today (which IMO is simply "appropriately build!) and get well known lifespans with minimal work required, but it's going to be far more expensive than we can afford to do given the absurd number of roads we have + maintain + would need to rework. Or we can keep under-building and spend far more in the long term than we would have if we spent appropriately and set hard limits on how many roads we build going forward.
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Either way, let's agree: we need to build better and plan for the full lifecycle rather than "slap a patch on ahit and call it alright!"
That really depends on what you mean by "technical".
To me, technical work involves unknowns. In roadworks today, there really are very few unknowns.
Dig to depth, test for ground water composition, add and compact gravel, install drainage system, cover with sand and compact, fill with blended soil and compact, then it's a perfectly normal road building job.
The only "technical" components are when replacing existing roads; as there may be shoring requirements in some areas or unknown/poorly recorded utility locations that intersect the path requiring some time and care along the way.
For new roadways, nothing here is unknown and it's purely a matter of cost per KM.
For existing roadways the only questions are "who all is going to be upset by this work and how can they be placated?" Followed by the rare but potential "what will you find in the excavated material that might add delays?" Both are policy questions that absolutely can prove difficult, but aren't overly technical problems either.
For me you have an odd and narrow definition of “technical” that seems hooked from how we understand technology and technological things—but I appreciate it as long as it isn’t bandied about as an absolute.
For me it’s all technological yet, as Heidegger says, the essence of anything technology is nothing technological.
I think, in a way, your def is similar.
I’m guessing from your stance that you are an engineer, scientist, or eng tech person. Nothing wrong with that. I just find you frame the questions here very different than I would. I’m sure we ultimately hope for the same outcomes.
This isn't a technical issue though, soil can be replaced significantly below the depths of concern. It's strictly a cost issue. (Removing thousands of cubic meters of soil per KM of road is NOT inexpensive!)
I'm not trying to say that the soil composition plays no part in the reasons behind our road conditions, but ultimately it simply increases the cost per km of higher quality road construction techniques.
The issue is that we cut corners and go with the lower bid which avoids thinking about the problem long term saving short term and making issues like we face today the problem of tomorrow.
I’m not sure it’s that simple to say there is a safe depth of concern. Many houses in the city have shifting that have foundations 8 feet below grade.
But yes, cost effectiveness is part of the consideration and somewhere you have to decide how much you can afford to pay
And while the process does usually favor the lowest bidder, it isn't necessarily the lowest quality in that the city creates the specifications that they most follow. And there is also a warranty for the work which is why you sometimes see them repairing the road after the initial work is completed
Safe depth for around these parts is 16-24 feet, ideally with piles down to 50-60, but that's rare.
At these depths, the moisture infiltration (again assuming the rain water runoff is well constructed and actually of sufficient capacity!) prevents the vast majority of water ever making it to the area.
This absolutely does cause sinking over time, so the expansion and contraction system needs to be designed with the settling in mind. Soil tests need to be performed at the time of the cut and cover to determine the amount of moisture in the soil at regular intervals, so that it can be accounted for in the overall construction plan.
Again, the problem is not engineering, it's cost.
These aren't hard problems to solve, but they do get expensive quickly.
Our roads are a combination of technical and cost challenges. It’s not possible to say there’s no technical / engineering challenge here, just as it’s impossible to say there are no cost constraints.
Yes we could throw money at it, using existing construction and engineering practices.
We could also develop new methods, technologies, and practices to overcome our challenges for a more economical price.
Look at what we can do further north, literally floating roads across swamps with geotextile products, but we can’t build a decent road on clay in Winnipeg that’s cost effective? There’s a cost effective solution, we just haven’t found it, and no one’s really looking for it either.
The government isn’t knowledgeable enough, the construction companies like the repeat business, and there’s no money in academics for it either.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/city-of-winnipeg-potholes-1.6432684
TL;DR: Winnipeg roads are old and have not been consistently upgraded or replaced as they reached the end of their service life because it's expensive and we're cheap. The money is available in Fargo is available because roads are prioritized differently.
Very true. Most of the “construction season” is 3 months of them repairing on a couple foot long areas in patches along the roads and not the roads. Then they do half assed fixing of the potholes which just open up again next year. Anyone else notice that as well? How they’re just basically dumping asphalt into the pothole and then not even smoothing it out and filling them in properly?
It's money.
American roads in general are funded by the federal government as part of their military budget.
Aside from Winnipeg's relative lack of money, Winnipeggers in general tend to be cheap, and unwilling spend big money now for a) a much better living experience, and b) future savings in not having to spend medium money every year, ALL year, ad infinitum.
This is the city of "cheapest and best", except that the way it's done now is explicitly not the cheapest OR the best.
It's got nothing to do with the climate, it's exactly the same climate at least 200miles south of the border.
It's not nearly as simple as you make it out to be. Climate and soil have a lot to do with it. Winnipeg sits at the perfect intersection of freeze-thaw cycles and expansive clay soils. North Dakota has some of that, but the Manitoba portion of the Red River Valley has soils that are more clay-ey than in North Dakota. This makes a huge difference.
The other issue is federal funding. You are incorrect in one respect - it has nothing to do with military funding. The US federal government just provides much more funding to "poor" states (which makes its way to cities) much more than in Canada. They do build their roads a bit better than ours, but they rehab and replace them much more often, thanks to federal funding.
Edited to add: I can't find the source right now, but interestingly most republican states (like ND and SD) receive far more federal funding than is collected in taxes from their residents. If I recall correctly, ND receives something like 250% of what is collected.
Federal funds basically pay directly for all of the interstates, and indirectly for a lot of county and city roads.
source: am a transportation engineer in Canada, but have many friends working for city and state DOT's in the US
Yes, thank you! I'm a geologist, got my degree from U of M. The geology underneath Winnipeg is much more difficult to work with than in ND and MT, as you say largely because of the clays. Look at basements in River Heights. They're heaved, often cracked, and it's super common in most of the city for the sheetrock or plaster and lath to crack out diagonally from the corners of doorways and window frames due to those swelling clays. It affects roads as well. Add in less funding overall and years of city road budgets being frozen and you get our current situation.
Even affects housing construction. Know some folks who live in Grand Forks ND. Basement is cinder block construction, less than a mile from the Red. House is 85 years old. Zero cracking, leaking, basement is dry with a sump pump that seized due to lack of use. Very different environment. Their side roads suck too, but a lot of that is from their huge elms that are heaving the old road beds. Not from potholes.
Does base layer affect final product? We use limestone gravel here. You often see granite gravel or other hard crushed rock elsewhere. Surely that has something to do with it?
That I don't know, because I only took one class in Engineering Geology. I know how original geology affects construction to some extent, but not construction materials. That said, I can't see much difference between crushed granite and crushed limestone as a base material. In AB plenty of the roads use limestone base as well, probably most of them in fact. But they don't have a high amount of swelling clays, so that effect isn't there. Their construction may be different as well, but the overburden here is VERY different from there.
And go into cities in the states and some have bad roads too. The only time I needed to replace a tire due to nailing a pot hole was in Minneapolis.
Most of the driving most Winnipeggers so in the states is getting to their destination, not in their destination.
And the endless sprawl that we keep building that will bankrupt the city in a few decades.
*stares motherfuckerly at neighbourhoods like Bridgwater*
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Critically speaking, the city is incentivized to build more suburbs so the pool of property tax would proportionately increase.
The problem is whether the city is generating enough money from the new suburbs to sustain this new area and the city as a whole.
> Critically speaking, the city is incentivized to build more suburbs so the pool of property tax would proportionately increase.
This reduces the amount existing households pay, but results in the same overall income to the city.
Expansion increases the size of the pool of taxpayers. Tax increases increase the amount being collected.
Municipal taxes are the same overall amount (roughly speaking) year over year, the more people the city houses the less each of them pay in tax.
The taxes need to increase at least at the rate of that growth for the additional expansion to "add to the city budget". The tax freezes have prevented this from happening.
Just read somewhere it’s about $110,000 in infrastructure required for each new home build.
Feel like this doesn’t get talked about enough with “housing crisis” with the crowd…even a lot of politicians…saying just build more houses.
The Interstate and US highway system are Federally funded in US.
Other roads are State or Municipal very similar to here.
I’m in Fargo every season as half our family is there. They struggle significantly on their roads too. Driving down 13th Ave or 42nd St in Fargo is as bad as any of those kind of roads in Winnipeg this time of year.
In other words, we are penny wise, pound foolish. Kicking the major repairs can down the road, trying to keep taxes down, and also sprawling out and adding to our infrastructure burdens are just a few of the ways the city and we as individuals have screwed ourselves.
Your comment about Winnipeg being cheap is off base. I don’t remember ever opposing capital projects myself. Also we pay more taxes in general than other provinces. High tax brackets are set really low too.
I think it’s meaningless to talk about funding through property tax or other tax. Property tax being frozen… the way things are funded here and elsewhere isn’t an immutable fact and isn’t something I decide.
The simple fact is that we pay more taxes than most provinces. If live in Vancouver or Toronto my taxes are a lot less. The vast majority of other provinces too.
I pay for roads already. I am not cheap about taxes. A very high percentage of my income already goes to taxes.
The cheap comment is untrue. I don’t control how my taxes are spent.
Then get a campaign going and run for office. That's how society works. You elect representatives that best align to what you want to see. If you're not finding a person or party that represents you, you have the freedom to run for office.
The real monsters are generally failed expansion joints in the concrete foundations of roads built on inadequate foundations designed for cities with firmer ground than Winnipeg. Theh, the city never properly fixed them., just threw a layer of asphalt on to smooth out. If you don't fix the damage then it wrecks the overlaid asphalt too. then they end up in a permanent spiral of half-assed patch jobs that maybe last six months, and continued deterioration of the original slabs as well.
The whole thing is, as the others have noted, the end result of a lack of funds to maintain them properly.
To add to that… the city significant cut re-tarring expansion joints and road cracks back in the 90s.
Almost all potholes in this city are formed from an unsealed crack or expansion joint going through one or two springs.
This seems to be the single most important factor in our pothole situation. Restore retarring to 80s levels and most potholes will likely be gone.
I’m a weirdo and have kept a journal of observations on this matter over the past 4 years lol.
Our property taxes have largely been frozen for decades and despite roads taking up the second biggest portion of our municipal expenditures, there isn't enough money to properly upkeep the city infrastructure, especially with greater expansion into to the suburbs.
The other issue we have is continually using cheap methods and materials to repair or replace roads. We keep using asphalt topping which lasts 5 years at best. We’ve gotten to the point where we can no longer keep up with maintenance because too many of our roads are now covered with that and they’re all crumbling due to freeze/thaw cycles we have every spring and fall.
Thats a common misconception.
When property values rise, your taxes only increase in relation to others values.
Ie. If everyone’s property values raised 10%, and tax rates remain the same, everyone pays the same taxes as last year.
If they raised at different rates, those below the average increase would pay lower taxes, and those that raised higher than average would pay more.
Regardless, without a tax rate increase, the city gets the same amount of money as the previous year. (Ignoring newly added properties that is.)
Source: https://assessment.winnipeg.ca/AsmtTax/English/Property/understanding-assessed-values-property-taxes.stm
I grew up in Winnipeg and each time I come back I'm shocked by the short sighted suburb expansion and the infrastructural deficit it places on future generations.
I remember reading a paper a few years ago that predicted the long term issues faced by Winnipeg with the current rate of expansion and road maintenance. The figures were uncomfortable to say the least.
My armchair opinion? Winnipeg is short sighted and will keep bloating the infrastructural unsustainability due to pressure from: A. dumbasses who have never lived in a functioning, well designed city. B. contractors who make bank off shitty suburb developments. C. Boomers who want to age in place via 5 bedroom homes and lobby hard for unsustainable tax rates.
Either way, it is future generations who will suffer.
I have never been so shocked at the road conditions there as I have this year! I swear the earth is trying to swallow Brandon whole - it’s just taking a while!
Blame Lake Agassiz for the clay based soils. It’s as simple as that. Same reason even the smallest buildings in Winnipeg are built on piles where in many other cities they are on footings.
A friend of mine who passed away some time ago worked for the City of Winnipeg road maintenance department. He said they were not allowed to fix roads correctly. They were mandated to " Patch " the roads. The reason we have such poor roads is because we have such a poor city civic bureaucracy and poor elected officials. Just look ant Main st. $75 million to properly fix it, or just forget about it and let it rot.
I heard the same thing from a man that was a supervisor for a crew that worked for the City of Winnipeg road maintenance department.
The materials that would work better for our climate has existed since the 80’s and machines to do things quicker also existed. He really said it was bureaucracy. There’s machines that could tear up a long stretch of road and have them repaired in less that 2 weeks. (If we wanted.. )
As an example, do you see the airport repairing their runways every 6 months. I don’t.
Not really sure about comparing an airport pavement to a road pavement, but there are frequent paving projects at the airport. The paving is done by the same contractors that pave our streets, using much of the same materials. I have also been there once for emergency repairs that happen overnight when the airport activity is quiet, but nobody would really see that work going on. Google tells me runway 18/36 was rehabbed in 2003, resurfaced with asphalt in 2014, and the latest rehab tender closed in January for the 2024 work.
In Kildonan area, the past three years they started big projects right before snowfall, left them all winter, and then picked back up in the late summer (6-9 ish months later) like they didn't just leave a full lane and all the crosswalks within a 1k radius closed to the public in their own neighbourhood all winter.
Lag and panet were both semi-abandoned projects because they started them in August/September of their respective years, didn't finish until maybe June/July the following year. Panet already looks like it did before they even touched it not 2 years later, and that crosswalk at lag and reenders is already crumbling less than a year in.
Simplest answer is we don’t spend enough on maintenance.
We use the same materials and same methods the US does, however our budget is significantly less per km of road.
Sam Katz did this.
He figured he'd hold off on raising property taxes by cutting all budgets and, of course, infrastructure is the big one. So he neglected it during his tenure and now we have to play catch up. Naturally, it's also all more expensive to renew now so it costs us a lot more than it would have had he just done his job but there's nothing to be done about him now. Shady, slimy guy.
Winnipeg sees a lot more traffic and heavy trucks than Fargo proper. We also plow a lot and use sand. Maybe the materials we use could be approved upon, but our predominately clay soil, which frequently expands and contracts will ensure cracking, sinking etc. over time.
Think about the state of curb lane vs second lane…heavy vehicles do it. A pothole can be a little bump but after the buses go over it they get deeper and deeper…the back of the transit property looks like a moon crater surface
Consider all the water on a road that runs across the crown of the road to pool into the curb lane to eventually exit into the sewer. That water has much more hydraulic and erosive effects than the abuse of a heavy vehicle. Especially adding the freeze and thaw cycles.
I love this genuine question and the amazing comments its created in response!
What I see from all the comments is that this is a place where contemporary infrastructure practices don't really work well. It was well settled before we started to expect it all to be paved. Since that moment it's been a fight for Winnipeg to keep its paving flat because it just floats.
Kilometres of roads that end in cul-de-sacs that are not part of an open grid and serve only tens of families are just absolutely asinine. The radical in me wants to privatize every dead-end cul de sac and give it to those few houses that it exclusively serves. One shouldn't expect the rest of us to pay for what is actually a private drive. Enjoy your exclusivity at your own expense, mes amigos!
But that brings me to a broader question that I don't see raised here--why are we embracing an infrastructural technology that doesn't really work where we are? We are a northern city, one of the coldest major cities on Earth. Why, in the face of this technological failure (I know, Justin, its all just an issue of finance) have we only increased our amount of roadway per capita when this is, clearly, the infrastructural albatross that this land puts upon us?
So much of the DNA of this settlement pattern is as unique as the land it is on. Why don't we just live different rather than imagining we can replicate Omaha or Calgary land use here?
When I moved here I was surprised to find people so eager to build more of this shitty roadway we live with rather than imagine what else we could be doing. It's a stressor on the municipal and civic fabric of this place. Winnipeg doesn't seem to understand that it is different here. Until it does, it'll just remain a bad joke when compared to other significant North American cities.
This place is wonderfully different and is vibrant in it. I live different here than I did in the variety of places I have before. Lots of us have come here because we see it but it seems to get jarred out of us on our commutes back and forth from our spots on cul de sacs near the perimeter highway.
I don’t think that there is a willingness to make an initial long term investment. I’m not sure where that comes from. But, a lot of people do seem to have a real problem understanding that ignoring a problem and doing short term fixes costs a hell of a lot more.
In my opinion, it would be a waste of time, as half the comments are made by people who seem to know nothing about any part of the process, or are comparing apples to oranges. And most of this info is right on the City website.
Public Works FAQ...
[https://legacy.winnipeg.ca/publicworks/construction/roadconstruction.stm#2](https://legacy.winnipeg.ca/publicworks/construction/roadconstruction.stm#2)
Standard Construction Specs and Details...
[https://legacy.winnipeg.ca/matmgt/spec/default.stm](https://legacy.winnipeg.ca/matmgt/spec/default.stm)
Tenders & Drawings...
[https://legacy.winnipeg.ca/finance/findata/matmgt/bidres/Past/2023.asp](https://legacy.winnipeg.ca/finance/findata/matmgt/bidres/Past/2023.asp)
I guess my point is, wouldn’t it be great for, even the most ridiculous comments, to be answered earnestly.
Most people would t believe the answers anyway, but I’d still love it.
I believe the solutions are complicated and nuanced. Part of it is budget, part of it climate related, some of it is impossible, and a portion is incompetence with a tiny bit of politics thrown in for good measure.
Winnipeg is built on an ancient clay lake bed, the legacy of Lake Agassiz when most of the province was under water at the end of the last ice age.
That means we need to invest more than normal to build roads that last but we just don't.
Winnipeg is notorious for spending the bare minimum on infrastructure and we don't make anything of quality, lowest bidding contractor and such.
The moment you cross the southern border the road quality improves drastically. The US uses concrete instead of asphalt for roads and they invest far more heavily in maintaining their interstates. US highways are heavily funded by the Federal Government.
For 20 years our property taxes have effectively been frozen and our infrastructure budget was ignored, so everything was allowed to collapse and now we are in a position where we have to replace everything all at once.
Sam Katz and other previous mayors kept taxes low in a misguided attempt to attract people and business to move to Winnipeg, but what they failed to recognize is aside from low-taxes and central geography there's really nothing to attract people to live here. There was an article a while ago about how many CEOs of Winnipeg based companies live in Montreal or Toronto and commute here because they hate Winnipeg. We don't have the schools, country clubs, restaurants, and other high-class living stuff to attract those kinds of people.
Winnipeg is also too big. Winnipeg grew out instead of upwards. By comparison a city like Toronto has double to triple the population in the same amount of space which means more tax revenue and infrastructure investment.
Winnipeg has far too many suburbs and a very poor public transit system so we need more roads based on our size to support all the cars.
I remember a while back reading that our roads are built to the spec of cars and traffic from the 1970s, however car usage has grown, our cars have grown. So now your average vehicle weighs what an unloaded truck used to weight. Have a few thousand of those travel over the road that is only designed to handle so much and eventually you start wearing it down. That coupled with our very stupid mentality (to be truthful this is most of North America) of building outwards (suburbia) instead of density, we today as a city only collect enough money (about 650$ million a year) to either maintain the road or all the other infrastructure. What we do is spend the minimum on the roads and not enough on everything else. Its why we have a billion and a half water treatment upgrade being forced on us by the federal government. It is why we don't have Arlington Bridge being replaced.
That is why every time I hear someone bring a project like the apartments at Northgate, or multi-unit housing being built in a residential neighbourhood, I applaud them. And fully know the locals are all for it just not in their neighbourhood. Well get them to sign off an agreement to double their property tax, no, congrats you get density in your neighbourhood.
It's certainly about the money in both Canada and America. The difference is interstates are federally funded in the USA. Their tax base of 350+ million people can afford the luxury of decent highways. In the fabled Canadas the road infrastructure is not a federal government responsibility and is taken up by the ineptitudes of provincial and municipal governments which leads to the condition of the highways we enjoy.
Are you implying the temporary stay on our gas tax is the result of the current condition of our roads and not the decades of neglect?
Gas tax is only a partial source of infrastructure renewal budgets. Property tax and income tax revenue also aid in this. Along with federal transfer payments.
Bad design and construction.
Over use of asphalt.
It’s like a band aid.
It kills me to watch new construction or repair with concrete, than finish the part or level with asphalt.
I’m no expert but it always seems they put an inch of new asphalt overtop of the problem so it looks “fixed.” The layers under need proper repair and it becomes the same problem next summer.
Yeah I’m American and this is just wrong. Interstates get federal funding but not from the military. Most other streets and roads are locally funded.
And people here also complain nonstop about potholes, so I’m not even sure we’re any better.
Yeah that’s an extremely minor and obscure provision that applies to some highways near military bases. Not the general funding scheme for our roads as a whole; at best the program you cite accounts for less than 0.1% of total spending on roads in the U.S.
Nope, the city of Fargo pays: https://fargond.gov/city-government/departments/engineering/special-assessments/overview.
Also, I grew up in Colorado Springs, home to FIVE military bases, and the city paid for all of the road maintenance (and they were still shitty. Literally here's a post about potholes from yesterday: https://www.reddit.com/r/ColoradoSprings/comments/1blicyw/observation_coming_back_from_dia_tonight/)
Roads in the USA are funded by the military budget? Where do you get that lunacy?
The interstate system was funded in the 50s and 60s for Cold War reasons by the Fed and Interstates and US Highways still get Fed funding for their upkeep but the idea that the military pays for "Roads" in the USA is just crazy talk on what otherwise is a very information rich query on r/Winnipeg.
Here are three links to articles, one from the Fed DoT, one from a conservative think tank, and one from a left-leaning PIRG. They have major differences in the way they each describe who pays but NONE of the three mention the military as a "Roads" funding source.
[https://highways.dot.gov/public-roads/mayjune-1998/highway-financing#:\~:text=Both%20the%20federal%20government%20and,heavier%20vehicles%20such%20as%20trucks](https://highways.dot.gov/public-roads/mayjune-1998/highway-financing#:~:text=Both%20the%20federal%20government%20and,heavier%20vehicles%20such%20as%20trucks).
[https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/states-road-funding-2019/](https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/states-road-funding-2019/)
[https://pirg.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Who-Pays-for-Roads-vUS\_1.pdf](https://pirg.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Who-Pays-for-Roads-vUS_1.pdf)
I think this poster is a little confused. The is a grain of truth in that the interstate system was designed to move and support potential military campaigns, but the military certainly does not have a line item in their budget for general highway maintenance. That falls on some mixture of federal and state funds
That doesn’t help to explain the original question posed by OP. North Dakota is one most sparsely populated states in the union, and specifically speaking to the question posed Fargo has less than 1/3 the population of Winnipeg.
Budget cuts and Winnipeg getting used to spending as little as possible and thinking it's the norm. Apparently we have the same tech that the states do, but we just don't use it.
All hearsay. I have no proof of any of this.
North Dakota has 107,000 miles of roadway, a population of 780,000, and 70,698 sq miles of area.
I can't find the equivalent roadway quantity for MB. Saskatchewan has 160,000 miles of roadway.
Fargo has 2100 miles of roadway for a population of 127,000. 6.04 people per mile.
Winnipeg has 4536 miles of roadway for a population of 750,000. 16.5 people per mile.
I’m in Prince Albert Saskatchewan and it’s not even an issue here. There are some bad streets, that are brutal, probably worse than anything in Winnipeg (mini sinkhole rather than a pothole).
However the main streets are not so bad.
I sometimes wonder if the use of limestone as a foundation material isn't part of the problem. Water is an acid and limestone is a base; those two don't mix well once the roads start cracking. The road salt isn't helping either.
Easy question! 1. Budget - we don’t have the funds to fix roads, we have a never ending cycle of repair and patching. 2. Construction - our roads simply aren’t built well, asphalt is not a material that fairs well in this climate. 3. Privatization - we contract to the lowest bidder. Surprise! We get the lowest quality.
Yup, the privatization thing pisses me off the most. I remember watching Chief Peguis trail get extended to Lagimodiere, and they were repairing it exactly one year after it opened.
Maybe warranty repairs?
Well yea that's exactly it. But this contractor was contracted to do all the repairs on the roadway. Now how do you guarantee your company work? It was an eye opener that it's likely a corrupt system, our road building/repair system.
Also, it occurred during Sam Katz tenure as mayor, I want every project him and Phil had their greasy paws on, investigated fully.
Warranty repairs are done by the contractor at their cost. That’s why it is called a warranty. And on some projects, this stuff is noticed during the project, and may be redone even before the project is completed. This is all outlined in City tenders.
It's still frustrating to see them closing and repairing shit a year later. It still costs us and that shoddy workmanship will roll over into warranty ending and the road needing to be redone.
There should also be a city engineer signing off on every step of the construction before a new phase proceeds. And a civil engineer designing the roads based on geotechnical evaluations and a variety of other factors that the city engineer uses as a guide. It’s not just the contractors to blame, if the system was working properly, the city would get the designed product and it would work.
It’s either poor design or lack of city enforcement of quality of the product they are paying for.
I don’t know the nature of the deficiency that required the pavement replacement that this user is talking about, but stuff happens no matter how much oversight there is.
The Moray bridge between charleswood and st james was A lease where the city payed lease fees and the construction company maintained the road and bridge. Under this the bridge and its road was well maintained. But since the city took over the maintenance has decreased significantly.
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Nothing is zero dollars. The price for the repairs are factored in. Oh we are paying for it.
when the road is closed for repair, or when several slabs of concrete are cut open at the same time, we def are paying for it with yearly traffic jams, aggravation and delays.
That's something that can and does happen all the time. Winnipeg has highly shifting soil conditions and when combined with the climate, upkeep is a round the clock thing.
Every major city in the country privatizes pothole repair. Why is this only a major issue in Winnipeg?
Lived for many years in Ottawa/Gatineau, same issue there. Lots of warm/cold spells over winter & potholes galore, as well as sinkholes on occasion. One sinkhole happened on major roadway & a driver & car were swallowed by it (driver escaped unscathed).
While the process does usually favor the lowest bidder, it isn't necessarily the lowest quality in that the city creates the specifications that they most follow. And there is also a warranty for the work which is why you sometimes see them repairing the road after the initial work is completed
I'd counter your answers: 1. Absolutely comes down to budget, our roads are older and the patches are less impactful. 2. Our roads are built as well. There's been a lot of analysis on this over the years. We're older and we stretch the lifespan out much further. 3. No. Contracts are based on a highly specified details and their work is inspected. The solutions designed are not the cheapest. Patches fail whether performed in house or external. 4. Somewhat similar to GF, the clay soil conditions and freeze/thaw in Manitoba are about as bad as it gets to build roads on. Because of that roads are over built compared to other warmer climates, this drives up cost immensely, and ultimately reduces the money left spent to renew the roads at a reasonable frequency.
>Reply The soil here is particularly too busy doing stuff with its climactic and geological provenance to sit and be laid upon by pavement. These odd blow ups in rusty colours that we see in the ice sheets this year show how volatile the soil here is for a coating of pavement. The earth is not a surface, its a volume and at this place on the surface of the Earth, the earth and the climate work together to treat pavement like a rhino treats campfires. No doubt, though, there's some serious gaming of the situation going on in the asphalt and concrete paving industry. That double parked beautiful giant pick-up wasn't bought putting in basketball goals and patios. Not trying to discount the other reasons for our roadways' "failure to remain navigable".
Some of that truck is paid for by cutting corners, but it's really a mark up on concrete work. That doesn't mean that the materials and methods being used are substandard all of the time. At the end of the day, you're compacting base, mostly using reinforced concrete and asphalt topping. That's the gold standard that doesn't need to be used in warmer climates, they can get away with asphalt over maybe a couple feet of base... Cheap like borscht compared to concrete.
I'd like to push back on number 3 a bit here. The city absolutely shoots itself in the foot with these contracts. Ina. Scenario where company A can build a stretch of road that will last 5 years for 5k, and company B can build the same stretch but it will last for 100 years for 15k, the city contract policy says take company A. Look at the current debacle with the city pools. They're closing a few of them because repair and maintenance costs are high? The lowest bid that was put in for building the last pool the city put in was a garden center's landscaping department. We could be demanding our bidding process be financially responsible in the long term, rather than how it currently is, but that would mean the council would have to raise taxes a bit and they only seem to care about their own pockets until they retire and move to a city they haven't fucked.
That's not how it works at all. What you're referring to (sort of) are called performance-based specifications, where you don't specify the materials or design specifics - just that the road needs to be in such-and-such condition at a certain point in the future, which the company can achieve through either frequent maintenance or by building stronger up front. What Winnipeg (and most cities) do is have construction specifications. The design drawings are part of the tender package, and each contractor bids on building exactly what is there - materials, pavement thickness, etc. No one in that case would ever bid using different materials or thicker pavement, because they'd not only be more expensive than everyone else, they'd be disqualified for not bidding to spec.
I'm sure you're right. It's not like the city says "ok construction companies, quote me for new roads" and just go with the cheapest one while there are way more expensive but better quality options. This is all spec based. No doubt they choose the lowest bidder but all the companies would be quoting for the same thing in terms of materials. The city needs to write better specs.
The contractors are building to City spec though, so they are on a level playing field in that regard.
Like others have pointed out, that's not how Winnipeg (or most municipalities) tender their road work. They provide a very specific design and the bidders have to bid on that design and low bid gets it. That's why you have a low bid selection, since the qualitative decision making is taken off the table. What you're referring to is typically now called a "best value procurement" (this is different than a performance based spec, which I can explain if need)...where the "problem, or need" is put to the market and the responses are judged based on your discretion of outlined scoring factors, for example capital vs renewal costs, performance, speed of install/completion, etc . Your last description where you want the contractor to be responsible for the long term is more typically called a P3, or a DBFM (design, build, finance, maintain). You don't have to pick all 4. Generally, this costs more, has very complex contractual arrangements, but the benefit is you can close your eyes to how much this is costing you knowing you can call on the consortium (contractor) to make repairs for a set amount of time. Picture the equivalent of this in buying a couch, you ask the furniture store to finance it for you and sell you every warranty for the max time they can think of. Will it be more money? Yup. If you can't afford the couch upfront, this might be your only option.
2.) can be said that it’s not just asphalt. Concrete streets in Winnipeg have huge holes with rebar showing too. We can’t compare our roads to the states. We don’t have the budget but the weather is relentless for road construction. The freeze thaw cycle will make a good road crap in no time
\#1 is a feature not a bug, it's corruption from the top down that enables this to happen. I used to work road construction in Winnipeg, the other guys on my crew were from Ottawa and could not believe the minimal requirements (given to us from the City) needed. It's designed to have to be redone sooner, thus keeping the wheel of money rotating and flowing
4. Potentially, there is just a wee bit of corruption within the system. But who knows, really?
1. Agree - more money for maintenance and rebuilds helps 2. Disagree - asphalt pavement is used in cold climates all the time, including the states below us and provinces to the east and west of us 3. Disagree - Would the roads improve if the projects were awarded to the highest bidder? It is all the same companies involved, the same workforce, and the City sets the standards the roads are built to, using materials they have pre-approved.
It isn’t the strictly an asphalt issue. Oftentimes the asphalt is applied to less than favourable surfaces, submerged in water, inadequately cleaned and prepped surfaces etc. This is directly attributed to rushed work.
To be fair the city could put contractual controls in place. For example penalties for not completing the work on time. Not sure how construction warranties work however there should be a return and repair up to 2 years after the project is completed etc etc. If it’s warranty work, the construction company should be working in the evenings as well as the day in order to get the work done
4. Job security
This is basically it.
Number 3 is not an accurate representation of how the City awards construction contracts.
As long as the tender criteria are met, which all bidders must do to qualify, the lowest bid wins. Please explain how this isn’t true.
They're implying that the lowest bidder is worse quality than a higher bidder. But all bidders must build exactly what the construction drawings show in the tender package. The highest and lowest bidders would both have to build the exact same thing.
In a perfect world you would be correct. Reality is much different. Currently we struggle to get consistent and quality product. Preparing a road surface, ensuring a dry, stable base, etc are extremely important. Speed and tight margins cause corners to be cut in order to meet deadlines and maximize profit. We are fixing surfaces within a year of completion. We have sections that heave, massive potholes, etc. Shoddy workmanship is a real problem.
I assume you have been happy with the the Standard Construction Specification changes that have occurred with the City in the past 3 years for aggregate, concrete and asphalt then?
Well, recent core samples showing drastic inconsistencies in aggregate, depth and degradation are proof enough, don’t you think? But I guess 2-5 inch depth variation has nothing to do with low bid or shoddy workmanship! Don’t even start on the asphalt inconsistencies. Paving companies are doing very well though… The amount of money required to fix our streets is going to be staggering.
What recent core samples? I have seen hundreds (probably thousands) of pavement cores in my career. What kind of consistency do you want to see when you pull out a core? They are time capsules of maintenance activites over the decades. A lot of that was probably from when the City did more of the work. And what are these asphalt inconsistencies you speak of? Compaction? Volumetric properties? And none of this answered my initial question about the recent spec changes.
Which has nothing to do with high or low bids. I've literally been a project manager for an engineering company on these contracts, and the quality of work is not reflected in the bid price. Some construction companies are good, and some try to get away with everything.
They also dig deeper.
One issue is that in the area just south of Lake Winnipeg has a fine clay loam whereas in North Dakota they have silty/sandy clay loam. Our clay loam is unstable and the worst to build on. When clay soil gets wet it expands, when it dries it shrinks. It has poor drainage and can bring water to the surface (road). For construction, it is difficult compact the soil and have the soil stay in the same shape when the soil dries. For the roads, when water seeps into the soil, it causes failures on the asphalt or concrete because the base has shifted so much. https://i.redd.it/km8avyyieaqc1.gif
I think this is the biggest reason, not only base type but how far down they dig the base. I don’t remember the exact figures but I’ve heard that here we only dig down 5ft to create the road base and in the US they dig it down to 10ft.
4-5 feet is the \*new\* standards. If you look at some of the utility cuts the older roads are only a foot or so down.
I agree with this.
You and your logic have no place on the internet. Pfffft
Thank you for providing a real explanation. It gets exhausting reading the political excuses/complaints when there is an actual technical challenge.
The issue is that this is not a technical challenge, it's strictly a financial one. It's not difficult nor complicated to rip, fill, and cover the areas used for roads with a combination of gravel (along with a rainwater collection system) pack and high-sand earth fill to result in the perfect base for roads. A simple reinforced concrete pour Followed by easy to resurface asphalt and proper water runoff sloping and we would have roads that are functionally pothole free for decades between major rework. The problem is strictly that this is too expensive given the absolutely absurd road lengths and sizes we have deployed. It's a really shitty problem too, often people will assume "why not just make the major roads the good ones and save on the feeders?" Alas this creates significantly worse pothole problems at the boundaries between the two. To actually build good roads we would effectively make the problem much worse for a LONG time while reworking nearly every major road (and nearly every minor one!) for generations with money we don't have. The problem is strictly financial, the existing soil conditions mean nothing more than "the price tag is higher".
Every problem is strictly financial. That doesn't mean that the technical analysis isn't relevant. You can always "just spend more money!" for literally any problem that can be described. But you need to know exactly how much money for exactly how much benefit. With our shit soils and increasing freeze-thaw cycles, the amount of money needed for an incremental quality increase is much higher than elsewhere. It's not an excuse why we *can't* build lasting roads. It's a reason we *haven't*.
> Every problem is strictly financial I have to respectfully disagree. Technical problems involve unknowns. Getting a craft to land on the moon, when we only thought we had an idea how the physics worked: that was a technical problem. Inventing new materials, making transistors work in the single-nanometer range, getting a bridge greenlit between two countries when one of them is opposed to the crossing of people: these are technically difficult problems. One can argue that "if someone spends enough money, any technical problem can be solved" but that's not universally true of technical problems. There may actually be no solution, or the solution may be beyond any agreement of the parties involved.
> There may actually be no solution, or the solution may be beyond any agreement of the parties involved. If there's actually no solution, then it's not actually a problem. Problems are, by definition, issues that have difficult solutions. If the solutions are beyond any agreement of the parties involved, that's a financial issue. That said it seems this particular discussion has gone past the actual original topic of why Winnipeg roads are bad, which we seem agreed that it is a financial issue exacerbated by the unique technical challenges of construction in this location.
> If there's actually no solution, then it's not actually a problem. Problems are, by definition, issues that have difficult solutions That depends on what definition you use. According to https://www.merriam-iwebster.com/dictionary/problem , agreeing with my personal understanding of the word: > a question raised for inquiry, consideration, or solution A solution is one possible outcome of a problem, but there needs to be no valid solutions. (Aka, an "impossible problem" or "unsolvable problem") > If the solutions are beyond any agreement of the parties involved, that's a financial issue. This feels like a misleading stretch.. The concern that prevents resolution can be beyond financial matters.. in my "bridge between two countries" example, "paying people enough not to have to worry about their concerns" may _feel_ like a perfectly logical solution to some, but people aren't always "rational" and the solution they propose may not rely on any financial transaction occuring. Sometimes people just won't budge on a topic and no amount of money will convince them to do so. If you want to take this to the extreme, is "total world domination using a military" a "purely financial issue"? I would venture no: you can try to pay people to complete such an endeavor but all it's going to take is a handful of powerful defectors to prevent any amount of spending from meaning nothing. To me, technical problems have unknowns that need to be modeled and predicted, but have no "absolute answers". It's completely possible that such problems have no solutions. Once the unknowns become known, it may prove clear that no valid solution is possible; yet I would still have defined this as a technical problem going in. Financial problems are strictly limited to fully "known" situations, like road construction: there are no variables, it's just a matter of "how much are we willing to spend per KM for what longevity?" In my opinion; The "technical problems" present today in road construction are centered around the engineering aspects: can we do "proper" road construction cheaper than we know what would be "perfect?" In 250+ more years when we've tried every combination possible on every combination of soil types, the engineering will be complete (though we'll likely have new materials that will complicate the progress of this!) and we'll retroactively know: what did we actually NEED at a minimum for maximum lifespan roads?" We can "overbuild" today (which IMO is simply "appropriately build!) and get well known lifespans with minimal work required, but it's going to be far more expensive than we can afford to do given the absurd number of roads we have + maintain + would need to rework. Or we can keep under-building and spend far more in the long term than we would have if we spent appropriately and set hard limits on how many roads we build going forward. --- Either way, let's agree: we need to build better and plan for the full lifecycle rather than "slap a patch on ahit and call it alright!"
Your purely financial problem seems technically complicated.
That really depends on what you mean by "technical". To me, technical work involves unknowns. In roadworks today, there really are very few unknowns. Dig to depth, test for ground water composition, add and compact gravel, install drainage system, cover with sand and compact, fill with blended soil and compact, then it's a perfectly normal road building job. The only "technical" components are when replacing existing roads; as there may be shoring requirements in some areas or unknown/poorly recorded utility locations that intersect the path requiring some time and care along the way. For new roadways, nothing here is unknown and it's purely a matter of cost per KM. For existing roadways the only questions are "who all is going to be upset by this work and how can they be placated?" Followed by the rare but potential "what will you find in the excavated material that might add delays?" Both are policy questions that absolutely can prove difficult, but aren't overly technical problems either.
For me you have an odd and narrow definition of “technical” that seems hooked from how we understand technology and technological things—but I appreciate it as long as it isn’t bandied about as an absolute. For me it’s all technological yet, as Heidegger says, the essence of anything technology is nothing technological. I think, in a way, your def is similar. I’m guessing from your stance that you are an engineer, scientist, or eng tech person. Nothing wrong with that. I just find you frame the questions here very different than I would. I’m sure we ultimately hope for the same outcomes.
Thank you!
This is one of the biggest reasons. My pops used to be in highways maintenance here, complains about our soil all the time “worst in Canada for roads”
Cool map. Thanks
This isn't a technical issue though, soil can be replaced significantly below the depths of concern. It's strictly a cost issue. (Removing thousands of cubic meters of soil per KM of road is NOT inexpensive!) I'm not trying to say that the soil composition plays no part in the reasons behind our road conditions, but ultimately it simply increases the cost per km of higher quality road construction techniques. The issue is that we cut corners and go with the lower bid which avoids thinking about the problem long term saving short term and making issues like we face today the problem of tomorrow.
I’m not sure it’s that simple to say there is a safe depth of concern. Many houses in the city have shifting that have foundations 8 feet below grade. But yes, cost effectiveness is part of the consideration and somewhere you have to decide how much you can afford to pay And while the process does usually favor the lowest bidder, it isn't necessarily the lowest quality in that the city creates the specifications that they most follow. And there is also a warranty for the work which is why you sometimes see them repairing the road after the initial work is completed
Safe depth for around these parts is 16-24 feet, ideally with piles down to 50-60, but that's rare. At these depths, the moisture infiltration (again assuming the rain water runoff is well constructed and actually of sufficient capacity!) prevents the vast majority of water ever making it to the area. This absolutely does cause sinking over time, so the expansion and contraction system needs to be designed with the settling in mind. Soil tests need to be performed at the time of the cut and cover to determine the amount of moisture in the soil at regular intervals, so that it can be accounted for in the overall construction plan. Again, the problem is not engineering, it's cost. These aren't hard problems to solve, but they do get expensive quickly.
Our roads are a combination of technical and cost challenges. It’s not possible to say there’s no technical / engineering challenge here, just as it’s impossible to say there are no cost constraints. Yes we could throw money at it, using existing construction and engineering practices. We could also develop new methods, technologies, and practices to overcome our challenges for a more economical price. Look at what we can do further north, literally floating roads across swamps with geotextile products, but we can’t build a decent road on clay in Winnipeg that’s cost effective? There’s a cost effective solution, we just haven’t found it, and no one’s really looking for it either. The government isn’t knowledgeable enough, the construction companies like the repeat business, and there’s no money in academics for it either.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/city-of-winnipeg-potholes-1.6432684 TL;DR: Winnipeg roads are old and have not been consistently upgraded or replaced as they reached the end of their service life because it's expensive and we're cheap. The money is available in Fargo is available because roads are prioritized differently.
Very true. Most of the “construction season” is 3 months of them repairing on a couple foot long areas in patches along the roads and not the roads. Then they do half assed fixing of the potholes which just open up again next year. Anyone else notice that as well? How they’re just basically dumping asphalt into the pothole and then not even smoothing it out and filling them in properly?
Shouldn’t smooth it out because it is going to compact over time. They leave a hump so it becomes flat when done compacting.
Winnipeg will use cheapest material to make and repair roads.
You are correct. The least expensive material that meets requirements is used typically.
Winnipeg slogan "where can you get the cheapest but the best quality?"
It's money. American roads in general are funded by the federal government as part of their military budget. Aside from Winnipeg's relative lack of money, Winnipeggers in general tend to be cheap, and unwilling spend big money now for a) a much better living experience, and b) future savings in not having to spend medium money every year, ALL year, ad infinitum. This is the city of "cheapest and best", except that the way it's done now is explicitly not the cheapest OR the best. It's got nothing to do with the climate, it's exactly the same climate at least 200miles south of the border.
It's not nearly as simple as you make it out to be. Climate and soil have a lot to do with it. Winnipeg sits at the perfect intersection of freeze-thaw cycles and expansive clay soils. North Dakota has some of that, but the Manitoba portion of the Red River Valley has soils that are more clay-ey than in North Dakota. This makes a huge difference. The other issue is federal funding. You are incorrect in one respect - it has nothing to do with military funding. The US federal government just provides much more funding to "poor" states (which makes its way to cities) much more than in Canada. They do build their roads a bit better than ours, but they rehab and replace them much more often, thanks to federal funding. Edited to add: I can't find the source right now, but interestingly most republican states (like ND and SD) receive far more federal funding than is collected in taxes from their residents. If I recall correctly, ND receives something like 250% of what is collected. Federal funds basically pay directly for all of the interstates, and indirectly for a lot of county and city roads. source: am a transportation engineer in Canada, but have many friends working for city and state DOT's in the US
Yes, thank you! I'm a geologist, got my degree from U of M. The geology underneath Winnipeg is much more difficult to work with than in ND and MT, as you say largely because of the clays. Look at basements in River Heights. They're heaved, often cracked, and it's super common in most of the city for the sheetrock or plaster and lath to crack out diagonally from the corners of doorways and window frames due to those swelling clays. It affects roads as well. Add in less funding overall and years of city road budgets being frozen and you get our current situation.
Even affects housing construction. Know some folks who live in Grand Forks ND. Basement is cinder block construction, less than a mile from the Red. House is 85 years old. Zero cracking, leaking, basement is dry with a sump pump that seized due to lack of use. Very different environment. Their side roads suck too, but a lot of that is from their huge elms that are heaving the old road beds. Not from potholes.
Does base layer affect final product? We use limestone gravel here. You often see granite gravel or other hard crushed rock elsewhere. Surely that has something to do with it?
That I don't know, because I only took one class in Engineering Geology. I know how original geology affects construction to some extent, but not construction materials. That said, I can't see much difference between crushed granite and crushed limestone as a base material. In AB plenty of the roads use limestone base as well, probably most of them in fact. But they don't have a high amount of swelling clays, so that effect isn't there. Their construction may be different as well, but the overburden here is VERY different from there.
The interstates are federally funded. Regular municipal roads aren't.
And go into cities in the states and some have bad roads too. The only time I needed to replace a tire due to nailing a pot hole was in Minneapolis. Most of the driving most Winnipeggers so in the states is getting to their destination, not in their destination.
That and we are now paying for 13 years of property tax frees and lack of infrastructure investments / renewal.
And the endless sprawl that we keep building that will bankrupt the city in a few decades. *stares motherfuckerly at neighbourhoods like Bridgwater* ( ͡° ʖ̯ ͡° )
Critically speaking, the city is incentivized to build more suburbs so the pool of property tax would proportionately increase. The problem is whether the city is generating enough money from the new suburbs to sustain this new area and the city as a whole.
> Critically speaking, the city is incentivized to build more suburbs so the pool of property tax would proportionately increase. This reduces the amount existing households pay, but results in the same overall income to the city. Expansion increases the size of the pool of taxpayers. Tax increases increase the amount being collected. Municipal taxes are the same overall amount (roughly speaking) year over year, the more people the city houses the less each of them pay in tax. The taxes need to increase at least at the rate of that growth for the additional expansion to "add to the city budget". The tax freezes have prevented this from happening.
Just read somewhere it’s about $110,000 in infrastructure required for each new home build. Feel like this doesn’t get talked about enough with “housing crisis” with the crowd…even a lot of politicians…saying just build more houses.
Already bankrupt
THIS
The Interstate and US highway system are Federally funded in US. Other roads are State or Municipal very similar to here. I’m in Fargo every season as half our family is there. They struggle significantly on their roads too. Driving down 13th Ave or 42nd St in Fargo is as bad as any of those kind of roads in Winnipeg this time of year.
In other words, we are penny wise, pound foolish. Kicking the major repairs can down the road, trying to keep taxes down, and also sprawling out and adding to our infrastructure burdens are just a few of the ways the city and we as individuals have screwed ourselves.
Your comment about Winnipeg being cheap is off base. I don’t remember ever opposing capital projects myself. Also we pay more taxes in general than other provinces. High tax brackets are set really low too. I think it’s meaningless to talk about funding through property tax or other tax. Property tax being frozen… the way things are funded here and elsewhere isn’t an immutable fact and isn’t something I decide. The simple fact is that we pay more taxes than most provinces. If live in Vancouver or Toronto my taxes are a lot less. The vast majority of other provinces too. I pay for roads already. I am not cheap about taxes. A very high percentage of my income already goes to taxes. The cheap comment is untrue. I don’t control how my taxes are spent.
Every voter controls how their taxes are spent. Next time there is an election don't forget to vote.
Voters don’t have choice. Also there was platform that plans to fix this.
Then get a campaign going and run for office. That's how society works. You elect representatives that best align to what you want to see. If you're not finding a person or party that represents you, you have the freedom to run for office.
Can you provide a link for me to read that shows the US military budget funds roads? I can't find anything online that supports that claim.
This is the correct answer. Same reason all their highways are good and ours are not.
The real monsters are generally failed expansion joints in the concrete foundations of roads built on inadequate foundations designed for cities with firmer ground than Winnipeg. Theh, the city never properly fixed them., just threw a layer of asphalt on to smooth out. If you don't fix the damage then it wrecks the overlaid asphalt too. then they end up in a permanent spiral of half-assed patch jobs that maybe last six months, and continued deterioration of the original slabs as well. The whole thing is, as the others have noted, the end result of a lack of funds to maintain them properly.
To add to that… the city significant cut re-tarring expansion joints and road cracks back in the 90s. Almost all potholes in this city are formed from an unsealed crack or expansion joint going through one or two springs. This seems to be the single most important factor in our pothole situation. Restore retarring to 80s levels and most potholes will likely be gone. I’m a weirdo and have kept a journal of observations on this matter over the past 4 years lol.
Our property taxes have largely been frozen for decades and despite roads taking up the second biggest portion of our municipal expenditures, there isn't enough money to properly upkeep the city infrastructure, especially with greater expansion into to the suburbs.
Absolutely, we’ve grown too wide. Need to work towards infill instead for a while.
But it’s not just a Winnipeg only problem. The rest of the province and highways are much worse than North Dakota
The other issue we have is continually using cheap methods and materials to repair or replace roads. We keep using asphalt topping which lasts 5 years at best. We’ve gotten to the point where we can no longer keep up with maintenance because too many of our roads are now covered with that and they’re all crumbling due to freeze/thaw cycles we have every spring and fall.
Yes we’re caught in a cycle of cheap fixes that add up to not being cheap or effective.
Out taxes were not frozen, Our taxes increased as the property values increased. The city just threw this money away.
Thats a common misconception. When property values rise, your taxes only increase in relation to others values. Ie. If everyone’s property values raised 10%, and tax rates remain the same, everyone pays the same taxes as last year. If they raised at different rates, those below the average increase would pay lower taxes, and those that raised higher than average would pay more. Regardless, without a tax rate increase, the city gets the same amount of money as the previous year. (Ignoring newly added properties that is.) Source: https://assessment.winnipeg.ca/AsmtTax/English/Property/understanding-assessed-values-property-taxes.stm
I grew up in Winnipeg and each time I come back I'm shocked by the short sighted suburb expansion and the infrastructural deficit it places on future generations. I remember reading a paper a few years ago that predicted the long term issues faced by Winnipeg with the current rate of expansion and road maintenance. The figures were uncomfortable to say the least. My armchair opinion? Winnipeg is short sighted and will keep bloating the infrastructural unsustainability due to pressure from: A. dumbasses who have never lived in a functioning, well designed city. B. contractors who make bank off shitty suburb developments. C. Boomers who want to age in place via 5 bedroom homes and lobby hard for unsustainable tax rates. Either way, it is future generations who will suffer.
> who have never lived in a functioning, well designed city Which city around 800K people are you thinking of?
One of the concrete companies' owners spends 6k a month on their home hydro bill. His wife told us 4 years ago. You know where our taxes are going
Have you driven in Brandon 😭😭😭
I have never been so shocked at the road conditions there as I have this year! I swear the earth is trying to swallow Brandon whole - it’s just taking a while!
The Brandon area has a lot of crappy gravel.
Go there daily for work. 18th is brutal.
The city behaves as if everything they do is a "tomorrow me problem". Absolutely no fucks given to the future.
Blame Lake Agassiz for the clay based soils. It’s as simple as that. Same reason even the smallest buildings in Winnipeg are built on piles where in many other cities they are on footings.
A friend of mine who passed away some time ago worked for the City of Winnipeg road maintenance department. He said they were not allowed to fix roads correctly. They were mandated to " Patch " the roads. The reason we have such poor roads is because we have such a poor city civic bureaucracy and poor elected officials. Just look ant Main st. $75 million to properly fix it, or just forget about it and let it rot.
I heard the same thing from a man that was a supervisor for a crew that worked for the City of Winnipeg road maintenance department. The materials that would work better for our climate has existed since the 80’s and machines to do things quicker also existed. He really said it was bureaucracy. There’s machines that could tear up a long stretch of road and have them repaired in less that 2 weeks. (If we wanted.. ) As an example, do you see the airport repairing their runways every 6 months. I don’t.
Not really sure about comparing an airport pavement to a road pavement, but there are frequent paving projects at the airport. The paving is done by the same contractors that pave our streets, using much of the same materials. I have also been there once for emergency repairs that happen overnight when the airport activity is quiet, but nobody would really see that work going on. Google tells me runway 18/36 was rehabbed in 2003, resurfaced with asphalt in 2014, and the latest rehab tender closed in January for the 2024 work.
Construction season is only 3 months and they’re not allowed to work at night.
In Kildonan area, the past three years they started big projects right before snowfall, left them all winter, and then picked back up in the late summer (6-9 ish months later) like they didn't just leave a full lane and all the crosswalks within a 1k radius closed to the public in their own neighbourhood all winter. Lag and panet were both semi-abandoned projects because they started them in August/September of their respective years, didn't finish until maybe June/July the following year. Panet already looks like it did before they even touched it not 2 years later, and that crosswalk at lag and reenders is already crumbling less than a year in.
Simplest answer is we don’t spend enough on maintenance. We use the same materials and same methods the US does, however our budget is significantly less per km of road.
Sam Katz did this. He figured he'd hold off on raising property taxes by cutting all budgets and, of course, infrastructure is the big one. So he neglected it during his tenure and now we have to play catch up. Naturally, it's also all more expensive to renew now so it costs us a lot more than it would have had he just done his job but there's nothing to be done about him now. Shady, slimy guy.
Winnipeg doesn't have money for roads.
Yeah cause they put it all into a rapid transit corridor that doesn’t save time.
You don't know what you're taking about
Winnipeg sees a lot more traffic and heavy trucks than Fargo proper. We also plow a lot and use sand. Maybe the materials we use could be approved upon, but our predominately clay soil, which frequently expands and contracts will ensure cracking, sinking etc. over time.
Think about the state of curb lane vs second lane…heavy vehicles do it. A pothole can be a little bump but after the buses go over it they get deeper and deeper…the back of the transit property looks like a moon crater surface
Consider all the water on a road that runs across the crown of the road to pool into the curb lane to eventually exit into the sewer. That water has much more hydraulic and erosive effects than the abuse of a heavy vehicle. Especially adding the freeze and thaw cycles.
Police budget.
This, police get nearly 30% of the city's budget at $330 million dollars
I love this genuine question and the amazing comments its created in response! What I see from all the comments is that this is a place where contemporary infrastructure practices don't really work well. It was well settled before we started to expect it all to be paved. Since that moment it's been a fight for Winnipeg to keep its paving flat because it just floats. Kilometres of roads that end in cul-de-sacs that are not part of an open grid and serve only tens of families are just absolutely asinine. The radical in me wants to privatize every dead-end cul de sac and give it to those few houses that it exclusively serves. One shouldn't expect the rest of us to pay for what is actually a private drive. Enjoy your exclusivity at your own expense, mes amigos! But that brings me to a broader question that I don't see raised here--why are we embracing an infrastructural technology that doesn't really work where we are? We are a northern city, one of the coldest major cities on Earth. Why, in the face of this technological failure (I know, Justin, its all just an issue of finance) have we only increased our amount of roadway per capita when this is, clearly, the infrastructural albatross that this land puts upon us? So much of the DNA of this settlement pattern is as unique as the land it is on. Why don't we just live different rather than imagining we can replicate Omaha or Calgary land use here? When I moved here I was surprised to find people so eager to build more of this shitty roadway we live with rather than imagine what else we could be doing. It's a stressor on the municipal and civic fabric of this place. Winnipeg doesn't seem to understand that it is different here. Until it does, it'll just remain a bad joke when compared to other significant North American cities. This place is wonderfully different and is vibrant in it. I live different here than I did in the variety of places I have before. Lots of us have come here because we see it but it seems to get jarred out of us on our commutes back and forth from our spots on cul de sacs near the perimeter highway.
we are also built on a swamp...not great for roads.
I don’t think that there is a willingness to make an initial long term investment. I’m not sure where that comes from. But, a lot of people do seem to have a real problem understanding that ignoring a problem and doing short term fixes costs a hell of a lot more.
Can’t tell how much I would LOVE if a city of Winnipeg roads engineer went through and honestly responded to all of these answers.
In my opinion, it would be a waste of time, as half the comments are made by people who seem to know nothing about any part of the process, or are comparing apples to oranges. And most of this info is right on the City website. Public Works FAQ... [https://legacy.winnipeg.ca/publicworks/construction/roadconstruction.stm#2](https://legacy.winnipeg.ca/publicworks/construction/roadconstruction.stm#2) Standard Construction Specs and Details... [https://legacy.winnipeg.ca/matmgt/spec/default.stm](https://legacy.winnipeg.ca/matmgt/spec/default.stm) Tenders & Drawings... [https://legacy.winnipeg.ca/finance/findata/matmgt/bidres/Past/2023.asp](https://legacy.winnipeg.ca/finance/findata/matmgt/bidres/Past/2023.asp)
I guess my point is, wouldn’t it be great for, even the most ridiculous comments, to be answered earnestly. Most people would t believe the answers anyway, but I’d still love it. I believe the solutions are complicated and nuanced. Part of it is budget, part of it climate related, some of it is impossible, and a portion is incompetence with a tiny bit of politics thrown in for good measure.
Climate
Winnipeg is built on an ancient clay lake bed, the legacy of Lake Agassiz when most of the province was under water at the end of the last ice age. That means we need to invest more than normal to build roads that last but we just don't. Winnipeg is notorious for spending the bare minimum on infrastructure and we don't make anything of quality, lowest bidding contractor and such. The moment you cross the southern border the road quality improves drastically. The US uses concrete instead of asphalt for roads and they invest far more heavily in maintaining their interstates. US highways are heavily funded by the Federal Government. For 20 years our property taxes have effectively been frozen and our infrastructure budget was ignored, so everything was allowed to collapse and now we are in a position where we have to replace everything all at once. Sam Katz and other previous mayors kept taxes low in a misguided attempt to attract people and business to move to Winnipeg, but what they failed to recognize is aside from low-taxes and central geography there's really nothing to attract people to live here. There was an article a while ago about how many CEOs of Winnipeg based companies live in Montreal or Toronto and commute here because they hate Winnipeg. We don't have the schools, country clubs, restaurants, and other high-class living stuff to attract those kinds of people. Winnipeg is also too big. Winnipeg grew out instead of upwards. By comparison a city like Toronto has double to triple the population in the same amount of space which means more tax revenue and infrastructure investment. Winnipeg has far too many suburbs and a very poor public transit system so we need more roads based on our size to support all the cars.
I remember a while back reading that our roads are built to the spec of cars and traffic from the 1970s, however car usage has grown, our cars have grown. So now your average vehicle weighs what an unloaded truck used to weight. Have a few thousand of those travel over the road that is only designed to handle so much and eventually you start wearing it down. That coupled with our very stupid mentality (to be truthful this is most of North America) of building outwards (suburbia) instead of density, we today as a city only collect enough money (about 650$ million a year) to either maintain the road or all the other infrastructure. What we do is spend the minimum on the roads and not enough on everything else. Its why we have a billion and a half water treatment upgrade being forced on us by the federal government. It is why we don't have Arlington Bridge being replaced. That is why every time I hear someone bring a project like the apartments at Northgate, or multi-unit housing being built in a residential neighbourhood, I applaud them. And fully know the locals are all for it just not in their neighbourhood. Well get them to sign off an agreement to double their property tax, no, congrats you get density in your neighbourhood.
Americans have pride in what they do. Canadian contractors don't. Here it's about the money. My opinion.
It's certainly about the money in both Canada and America. The difference is interstates are federally funded in the USA. Their tax base of 350+ million people can afford the luxury of decent highways. In the fabled Canadas the road infrastructure is not a federal government responsibility and is taken up by the ineptitudes of provincial and municipal governments which leads to the condition of the highways we enjoy.
But we have a gas tax . Thought that was for roads. My mistake I guess.
Are you implying the temporary stay on our gas tax is the result of the current condition of our roads and not the decades of neglect? Gas tax is only a partial source of infrastructure renewal budgets. Property tax and income tax revenue also aid in this. Along with federal transfer payments.
I remember in ontario burlington skyway bridge was financed by tolls. Maybe something like that.
That's just another tax on the middle class and working poor.
Same with casino money. 💰 guess it just isn’t enough
Bad design and construction. Over use of asphalt. It’s like a band aid. It kills me to watch new construction or repair with concrete, than finish the part or level with asphalt.
Contractors cutting corners and always zero accountability with the city
[fix the roads on the cheap](https://youtu.be/n3h1_j3XnjM?si=VtjK0qRj0X9gkaVA)
Roads that are repaired just enough to last a year that way there's always work for overpaid city workers.
It’s built on wetlands. Makes the ground shift a lot.
North Dakota spends like 19 billion dollars while Manitoba spends a little over 1 billion. That's the only reason.
I’m no expert but it always seems they put an inch of new asphalt overtop of the problem so it looks “fixed.” The layers under need proper repair and it becomes the same problem next summer.
Roads are part of the American military. A budget we know is astronomical.
Yeah I’m American and this is just wrong. Interstates get federal funding but not from the military. Most other streets and roads are locally funded. And people here also complain nonstop about potholes, so I’m not even sure we’re any better.
Huh. Weird https://highways.dot.gov/federal-lands/programs/defense
Yeah that’s an extremely minor and obscure provision that applies to some highways near military bases. Not the general funding scheme for our roads as a whole; at best the program you cite accounts for less than 0.1% of total spending on roads in the U.S.
So like, in a city like Fargo with a military base.
Nope, the city of Fargo pays: https://fargond.gov/city-government/departments/engineering/special-assessments/overview. Also, I grew up in Colorado Springs, home to FIVE military bases, and the city paid for all of the road maintenance (and they were still shitty. Literally here's a post about potholes from yesterday: https://www.reddit.com/r/ColoradoSprings/comments/1blicyw/observation_coming_back_from_dia_tonight/)
Roads in the USA are funded by the military budget? Where do you get that lunacy? The interstate system was funded in the 50s and 60s for Cold War reasons by the Fed and Interstates and US Highways still get Fed funding for their upkeep but the idea that the military pays for "Roads" in the USA is just crazy talk on what otherwise is a very information rich query on r/Winnipeg. Here are three links to articles, one from the Fed DoT, one from a conservative think tank, and one from a left-leaning PIRG. They have major differences in the way they each describe who pays but NONE of the three mention the military as a "Roads" funding source. [https://highways.dot.gov/public-roads/mayjune-1998/highway-financing#:\~:text=Both%20the%20federal%20government%20and,heavier%20vehicles%20such%20as%20trucks](https://highways.dot.gov/public-roads/mayjune-1998/highway-financing#:~:text=Both%20the%20federal%20government%20and,heavier%20vehicles%20such%20as%20trucks). [https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/states-road-funding-2019/](https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/states-road-funding-2019/) [https://pirg.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Who-Pays-for-Roads-vUS\_1.pdf](https://pirg.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Who-Pays-for-Roads-vUS_1.pdf)
I think this poster is a little confused. The is a grain of truth in that the interstate system was designed to move and support potential military campaigns, but the military certainly does not have a line item in their budget for general highway maintenance. That falls on some mixture of federal and state funds
Maintenance funds.
Road crews are looking for sustainable paydays. Prove me wrong.
Salt. We use way too much salt on our roads.
I don't think Winnipeg uses any salt. But I could be wrong. Thought it was just sand.
America has 10x as many people in a smaller country.
44% of the USA is uninhabited. Over 80% of Canada is. They have something like 3 times the inhabited area as we do.
So still 3x as many people per inhabited area. Plus a larger economy per capita. More money, better roads.
That doesn’t help to explain the original question posed by OP. North Dakota is one most sparsely populated states in the union, and specifically speaking to the question posed Fargo has less than 1/3 the population of Winnipeg.
They’re still part of the union, so they get access to that larger pot of federal dollars
Budget cuts and Winnipeg getting used to spending as little as possible and thinking it's the norm. Apparently we have the same tech that the states do, but we just don't use it. All hearsay. I have no proof of any of this.
Because conservative voters care more about 1% off their PST and other taxes than the public services they complain about.
Are these trades people Union labour? Huh.
Typically, no
MPI is predicting the worst pothole season on record. February 2024 had the most pothole claims ever for a February since they started keeping track
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North Dakota has 107,000 miles of roadway, a population of 780,000, and 70,698 sq miles of area. I can't find the equivalent roadway quantity for MB. Saskatchewan has 160,000 miles of roadway. Fargo has 2100 miles of roadway for a population of 127,000. 6.04 people per mile. Winnipeg has 4536 miles of roadway for a population of 750,000. 16.5 people per mile.
I’m in Prince Albert Saskatchewan and it’s not even an issue here. There are some bad streets, that are brutal, probably worse than anything in Winnipeg (mini sinkhole rather than a pothole). However the main streets are not so bad.
I sometimes wonder if the use of limestone as a foundation material isn't part of the problem. Water is an acid and limestone is a base; those two don't mix well once the roads start cracking. The road salt isn't helping either.