Discussions

Can anyone on here explain to me why the streets and avenues in this city are in such poor condition.

Money doesn’t grow on trees and people don’t want tax increases.  
Short construction season.  
Brutal winters, lots of freeze/thaw.

Couldn't agree more. I don't know how much you get out but I took a motorcycle trip to Duluth Minnesota last year and couldn't believe my eyes. A city of 85,000 people with streets and road 100% better than ours and several multi lane 70MPH freeways running right through the heart of downtown. WHERE THE H*LL DOES ALL OUR MONEY GO. They have been talking and talking and talking about a new bridge on 18th Street for 4 years now. They have been talking about a cloverleaf interchange at #1 & #16 for probably 10 years now. Now they are talking about an interchange on the Winnipeg bye-pass but bet that takes 10 years or more. WTH

Always wondered that myself. Came from an area of BC close to alberta, so extremely harsh winters as well. Although houses were more expensive, property taxes were so much cheaper Im basically paying the same amount per month. Yet the roads were maintained beautifully.. I’ve lived in a few other places and noticed the same things.. still paid less in taxes, but had better road maintenance year round. I ended up getting rid of my car because the roads here are so bad. Guess it is what it is.

Some-Guy your message just went over everyone else's head like a 747  
They are the ones that would holler the most if Palister spent more money

Wonder if any of them ducked....lol

The list is long in this town for streets that need major work. Our street near BU is finally getting done this year. It took many emails and pictures to get to the top of that list. 1/3 of our block is just gravel due to the amount of water mains the past few winters.  
 
Take a look at our city budget. Two expenses trump all the rest. And those costs are not going down. And that’s a can of worms that most CDN cities will have to deal with.  
 
Yeah, for a town of 50,000 our roads are shitty, same goes for the rundown community Centers. Did u know that when valleyview opened up all new a few years ago, it was the first new , redone, CC in over 40 years. 40 years ago it was North End CC. There are a few things our city doesn’t invest in too much  
 
Eventually the list is so long you never catch up

The city of Brandon does not practice any form of preventive road maintenance.  
 
No  
-micro surfacing  
-chipseal/sealcoat  
-virtually no crack sealing  
-fog seal  
 
The only thing Brandon does is reactive treatments like filling pothole and mill/overlays.  
 
I was told a few years ago the city crews were not fixing the streets because everyone was out dealing with the flowers...

you should see the mess in Alexander. need 4x4 to get around there. the paved street running east and west south side of the tracks was full of frost boils this spring as every other spring. but this year it took them 3 weeks into the thaw season to stop semi grain truck from using it to get to the grain elevator. one truck got stuck in a soft spot. pavement all busted up. is an eye sore. wouldn't doubt it also factors in to peoples decision to buy or not buy a house out here. all other streets are full of pot holes. the streets make the community look bad in my opinion.

I don't think you understand how the tendering system works for jobs like that.  
 
MIT says we want this and that done. They also say you are going to pay us x per day for site occupancy. They also say after x date you have a $100k lumpsum penalty and a daily penalty after that.  
 
If you are referring to hwy 2 from 10 to souris. They completed cold in place recycling on that section of road which is not a common place in most States, North Dakota for example has had one job completed with a county. Ontario however performs a tremendous amount of it. Manitoba on the other hand has only completed about 6 jobs ever of CIP.

Whatever happened to the extremely expensive pothole machine the city invested in quite a long time ago. I never once saw the thing in action. That was a waste of money it seems.

"pothole machine" does nothing more than heat up asphalt grindings to use as "asphalt" with a diesel burner. It doesn't fill potholes. It's nothing you can take out on the road either. Very smokey, smelly and impractical. Meant for a small town or municipality.  
 
This in the machine in question.  

It seems to me it's working overtime. We have pot holes all over the place and that damn machine keeps on making new ones.

I understand we are a small city and we have a small budget but why dont they do what my home country did, bring foreign companies, I bet there is a company out there that will do for way less that they usually pay, as long as they do a good work they can save up some money and do more, I was astonished when I noticed how much construction workers make here, I cant imagine how expensive these local companies charge if it was me Id get outside companies to do it for less and way faster.

The company that comes in also needs access to an asphalt plant too, or have their own. When there is next to none for competition it leaves very little in terms of wage competition. With technology now I cannot understand why with the save the environment movement we are not using plastics for paving.

Highways is responsible for 18th street, all the way through town. They have six engineers in their office. Each one sucking up $100,000.00 a year PLUS bonus each. That's where the money is going!

Some areas are using plastics in paving however with our climate elastic properties are more desirable in to combat our freeze thaw cycles. Plastics in pavements are better for increasing high temperature performance in places like Arizona where the high temperatures are the main thing to fight.

An asphalt plant needs about 60,000-100,000 tonne of mix in order to operate and be profitable in a year. The typical Brandon area market is lucky if it's that large most years. With increased competition splitting this market makes it unprofitable for both companies. Asphalt companies also need access to local high quality aggregates in order to compete, in the Brandon area most aggregate is privately owned and much of it is tied up by various local construction companies.