Pothole-ology: The fine science of rough roads

ALISON BLACKDUCK

IQALUIT — There’s a method to the madness of Iqaluit’s pothole-pitted roads, says one of the world’s foremost civil engineers.

Ralph Haas is a distinguished professor emeritus of civil engineering at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. He’s also a die-hard marathoner, who used to make an annual pilgrimage to Nanisivik for the Midnight Sun Marathon.

In the mid-1960s, Haas helped develop the Riding Comfort Index, which is used by the Transportation Association of Canada to determine acceptable and unacceptable levels of road roughness.

“The index is based on Joe Blow and Mary Smith citizens rating roads that range from providing a smooth automobile ride to an unacceptable level of roughness,” Haas explained in a telephone interview from Edmonton, where he’s working with city officials on their infrastructure planning.

Volunteers rate the roads on a scale from one to 10, and then the results are averaged by researchers to give an overall picture of a road network’s social acceptability.

“At the point in the index where ride comfort becomes unacceptable there’s usually a consensus amongst most people — from the coffee shop server to the office administrator,” Haas said.

Creating the index was part of Haas’ important, though often overlooked, contribution to the betterment of society that earned him the Order of Canada in 1999.

Haas was contacted Monday after Nunatsiaq News estimated Iqaluit’s total pothole count to be a staggering 300,000.

“Good lord!” Haas said upon hearing that figure.

Though the study was thoroughly unscientific — it involved two intrepid reporters measuring three metres of road outside the newsroom, then counting the number of potholes therein (42, to be exact), and then factoring the findings into a complex series of division and multiplication – it showed that Iqaluit’s streets are practically nothing but potholes.

In such a situation, Haas said, “You’re faced with continual patching. At some point the entire road network will have to be replaced.”

Potholes are serious business.

“Potholes are formed when a bit of the road material gets loose either through bad packing or the effect of moisture in the material freezing and thawing,” Haas says. “A few stones then get loose and every vehicle passing over the pothole squeezes a bit more of the material loose, causing more damage.

“It jars things travelling on it loose, too; there’s an awful impact on a vehicle’s suspension.”

Unfortunately, according to Haas, “If you’ve got that many potholes you can do some short-term patching and filling in, which will last for a couple of days. It’s like patching up a rusty car, eventually you have to give up.”

But Haas says there’s still hope for Iqaluit’s roads.

The cost of overhauling them shouldn’t run more than $500,000 per kilometre, he says, and that includes the cost of shipping the material North.

Haas says Iqaluit’s transportation dilemma still doesn’t sound as bad as what he’s witnessed in parts of Russia, one of the many countries where he’s been invited to provide his expertise.

“In Russia, there was no will nor money to fix the roads, which were virtually impassable unless you owned a Hummer,” Haas recalled.