Guest Column by Darrell Dunn, Publisher, The Weekly Bean.
Tis the season. I drive a little go-cart sized car with extremely good handling. It corners like it’s on rails and has fantastic steering response; which is great given the time of year it is and how that affects road conditions. Winter snow and ice are nothing compared to the suspension damage that “springtime-in-Lloyd” can cause. Yet, on the other hand it kind of takes me back to when I was young with excellent reactions and loved to compete in road-rally competitions. You had to be on maximum alert, complete anticipation of driving demands and something of a seer to see what unholy road conditions you had to avoid in order not only to remain in the competition, but possibly to simply survive.
Lloydminster, by virtue of sitting atop a base of prairie goop, interspersed with multitudes of sloughs and swampland with no discernible “bottom”, combined with the freeze/thaw effect of our weird winters, graces us with a road system guaranteed to disintegrate in spring-time as temperatures inch up above 0 on a regular basis.
The tire shops who specialize in wheel-alignments, tires and bent-rim replacements, consider this time of year as their Christmas.
So, who can we point the finger at and blame for this almost instant deterioration of the road-ways from solid, frozen foundations upon which we can safely drive to the lumpy, pot-holed, disintegrating, obstacle-strewn, motorway courses we call our road system? Well, there are a number of people who are deserving of our collective wrath.
I would like to start with the Mayor. He obviously has no interest in the welfare of those citizens of our community that are forced to use those roadways to go to and froe on a regular basis. He seems not to care about clearing the monster snowfalls we receive and then cheerfully ignores the potential damages our pathetic road system inflicts on our suspensions. I mean, after all; he’s the Mayor and is supposed to do stuff. And what about Councilors? One guy is a bicycle nut who doesn’t drive anyway, and another guy drives heavy trucks that will go through pretty much anything and a pothole that will disappear my Honda doesn’t even register on his Kenny.
And what about our City Engineering department. Don’t they drive? When they put out a proposal for road-way work, don’t they demand a “No Pothole” guarantee? How hard can it be? Just use more and bigger aggregate in the base; it can’t cost that much ….. really. And what are they using for asphalt topping? Brown sugar? I mean find a blend that will last for more than two seasons!
This is so much fun, and I am certainly going to hear about it from my friends at City Hall. But, who is really to blame? Three factors. One, the original selection of location. As a history buff I have heard a number of different versions on why Mr. Issac Barr and the colonists ended up here and all of them are entertaining to say the least. Competence was not high on the agenda of attributes that could be ascribed to these folks, albeit, those who did survive and do well, some of whose family names are still well known, must be given full credit for endurance. In all fairness, to presume they would have the foresight to recognize the challenge of building a long-lasting roadway on the goop making up the base of the little community is a tad unfair; but here we are.
Secondly, geology. I grew up in the Regina Plain, which includes Regina. Generally there is no base, and when it gets wet, nothing moves. Water, or lack thereof, makes the Regina Plain swell or shrink. Also, given the fact that the CPR’s Van Horne picked the location of Regina as an “up yours” insult to Edgar Dewdney, who was a scoundrel of the first order, resulting in the fact that Regina, as with Lloydminster, was built in an actual swamp; and has precisely the same road-building characteristics as we have here. In comparison, Calgary is built on a literal gravel pit. With a solid base, their road-system demands far less maintenance because the base is solid.
Finally, Mother Nature. She is temperamental and often nasty. She knows that when you freeze and thaw water on a consistent basis you can make things move. Not just roadways, but entire mountains. If you have ever been to Frank Slide in the southern Alberta Rockies you will see the extreme result of constant freezing and thawing. The process brought down the entire side of a mountain. Our roads here don’t stand a chance; yet, by and large, they’re pretty good, all things considered. I grew up on dirt farm roads; they aren’t as good. So, “thanks” to those people who do the work at keeping our roads drivable!
Read more: Guest Column – Executive Authority Abused
