Close to half of Sudbury roads need repairs now

Sudbury city councillors heard some bad news about the state of city roads at a public meeting Tuesday — almost half of the roads in the city need immediate work.

A report presented to council stated that a road should be completely repaved every 40 years, but that’s not happening in Sudbury.

According to Oscar Poloni a spokesperson with KPMG, the financial consulting firm who did the report, said the city needs to double the amount of money it puts into road repair just to maintain them in their current state.

He noted the city’s timeline for road replacement is inordinately long.

"Based on what you spend now ... on average ... if I put a piece of pavement down today ... the next time I will spend major capital on that road with be 2095," Poloni said.

The standards put forth by the Ontario Good Roads Association — a group that lobbies the province for better infrastructure on behalf of municipalities — indicate 45 per cent of roads in Sudbury need immediate repairs.

Turning point?

The cost to complete those recommended repairs is projected at $700 million. Council spent about $35 million on roads last year.

Councillor Dave Kilgour said he thinks this could be a turning point.

"I would hope that we would all take what we're seeing today right to heart and start looking for novel ideas," he said.

The KPMG report suggested putting $6 million dollars more into road repairs, every year, for the next 10 years.

Sudbury is not alone in its road repair woes. The report also showed similar cities across the country are in the same situation.

Councillor Fabio Belli blamed a lack of grants from both federal and provincial governments.

"The question I ask is ... if the government’s not going to give us any money, federally or provincially, where are we going to get this funding? I'd like to know," he said.

Now council faces the challenge of potentially spending $6 million more each year for the next decade, without significantly raising taxes.