By Doug Draper
It was a year ago this March that I was driving down one of the busier urban roads in our region and hit a pothole so jagged and deep it rattled the bolts holding together the frame of my car and almost yanked the steering wheel out of my hands.
A monstor pothole, waiting for another victim, on St. Davids Street West in Niagara's Thorold, Ontario community.
I had just had my car in for a front-wheel alignment, along with a couple of ball-joint and tie-rod replacements for a good two or three hundred bucks, and the car was now driving nice and steady until I hit that crater on the surface of one of the roads we pay for to be maintained with our hard-earned tax money. Suffice to say, I had to go back to the garage for another round of front-wheel work that cost me another two or three hundred dollars.
I’ve always been on the lookout for teeth-rattling potholes – even before that particularly costly incident – and have tried calling the municipal and county, or provincial or state government responsible in our greater bi-national Niagara region to maybe take out a little time from hiring high-priced consultants to tell them what they already know on one issue or another, and to bring out a bit of asphalt and fill the bloody things!
In Niagara, Ontario, you can contact CAA Niagara (this Ontario region’s chapter of the Canadian Automobile Association) and link into its ‘Pothole Watch’ program to fill out a report on car-damaging potholes you know about, and it will bring those potholes to the appropriate government body’s attention. That link is www.caaniagara.ca/pothole .
On the American side of our greater Niagara region, I don’t know of any American Automobile Association (CAA’s U.S. counterpart) equivalent of the ‘Pothole Watch’ program north of the border. If someone out there knows of such a program, please let Niagara At Large know through a comment below or through emailing the information to NAL publisher Doug Draper at drapers@vaxxine.com.
And just one final note. Municipal governments are looking for all kinds of ways to keep taxes down, but kicking the can down the road when it comes to road maintenance may not be one of the better ones. From what I have heard from municipal roads officials, when you put off fixing roads, the cracks in the pavement only get larger until they turn into the kind of shell holes that we are talking about here. Just a thought, and Niagara At Large encourages you to include yours below.
(Visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to residents in our greater Niagara region and beyond.)
Niagara At Large 
much needed. will follow through…. with the website….. Cdn winters, eh?
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Since our government is still saddled with its blundering corporate consultants who perenially download costs, we might as well do what some states are doing, and it makes economic sense. Instead of repairing potholes, we send in heavy equipment to break up the roads, and then compact them. It’s better than gravel, because asphalt compacts well and lends itself to quick repairs. Best yet, consultants driving their high-end status vehicles will have to slow down and pay attention to the grubby locals.
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Time to reduce the number of cars on the roads, and reduce the use of corrosive salt substances and find effective substitutes to prolong the life of the roads.
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The Niagara city of Thorold, Ontario deserves two thumbs up for its response to the pothole depicted in the photo accompanying this post. Within hours of being notified about this particularly bad one by the publishers of Niagara At Large, it was smothered in asphalt. So it is worth taking a few minutes to call your muncipality’s public works department when you spot a bad one. Might save you or someone else hundreds of dollars in repairs to your vehicle.
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