{"id":619908,"date":"2026-04-22T00:15:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T00:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/619908\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T00:15:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T00:15:10","slug":"edmonton-professor-suggests-better-material-and-data-to-prevent-potholes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/619908\/","title":{"rendered":"Edmonton professor suggests better material and data to prevent potholes"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s\u00a0a sure sign of spring in Edmonton: green grass is beginning to show, birds are flying, and potholes are appearing.<\/p>\n

Already this year, the City has filled more than\u00a048,000\u00a0potholes, but drivers know, there are still lots more to repair.<\/p>\n

\u201cDowntown. They\u2019re all along here, and in my neighborhood, so it\u2019s like they\u2019re really hard to avoid. Especially when there\u2019s so much traffic,\u201d said Presley Boutin, an Edmontonian.<\/p>\n

Michael Steinberg, another Edmontonian, said, \u201cI\u2019m a bit disappointed in the city. They spent too much on the LRT and not enough on the streets because there\u2019s holes are sitting sometimes. I think I could bury my dog there, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n

The City responded to more than 650,000 potholes last year, compared to Calgary\u2019s 35,000. One of the reasons is the freeze-thaw cycle.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Pothole patchwork seen in Edmonton. (Leo Cruzat, CityNews)<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I had to get realignment done, so not ideal, but I guess that\u2019s what happens when you live in a winter thaw cycle right?\u201d said Ian, an Edmontonian.<\/p>\n

But one engineering professor says using different materials when building or renewing roads can ensure potholes don\u2019t get out of hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can change \u2013 make changes to the polymers that we are using in the asphalt. There are self-healing materials that are coming. There are newer materials that are popping up, but is that the only way to fix the pothole problem? I don\u2019t think so,\u201d said Ali Bayat, an engineering professor at the University of Alberta.<\/p>\n

Bayat added that data collection should also be improved in terms of location and material used.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we\u2019re getting this many potholes year over year, we need more information to understand what is the root cause of the problem, and that\u2019s going to allow us to come up with a solution,\u201d said Bayat.<\/p>\n

\"\"Pothole patchwork seen in Edmonton. (Leo Cruzat, CityNews)<\/p>\n

But Edmonton\u2019s mayor says they already have a partnership with the university to test road maintenance and collect data.<\/p>\n

\u201cEssentially, the challenge the City of Edmonton faces compared to most cities is that any materials that we use to repair potholes need to withstand what is essentially a 70\u00b0 temperature swing, you know, down to about -30, 35 up to plus 30, give or take,\u201d said Mayor Andrew Knack.<\/p>\n

But for now, some drivers say it is a mutual responsibility between the City and drivers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe city has to make sure that they fix the serious ones that they\u2019re aware of, but it\u2019s also the driver\u2019s responsibility to be careful. Avoid them, and if there\u2019s anything significant that they reported to 311,\u201d said one Edmontonian CityNews spoke to.<\/p>\n

Bayat says using modified materials and improving data collection will reduce potholes by half, nearly 200,000 to 300,000, just like in Toronto and Ottawa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s\u00a0a sure sign of spring in Edmonton: green grass is beginning to show, birds are flying, and potholes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619909,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752],"class_list":{"0":"post-619908","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edmonton","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-edmonton"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}