Causeway potholes causing problems

Officials with the town of Riverview are calling on the Department of Transportation to repair the Petitcodiac Causeway.

Dave Muir, the chief administrative officer,said little work has been done on the town's link to Moncton and drivers have resorted to avoiding the outside lanes entirely.

"The responsibility for the causeway is the Department of Transportation's and the town has been after them for some time to do some work on the causeway," said Muir, who can see the causeway from his office.

"Even from here you can see holes in the road, you can see traffic in and around trying to avoid potholes. So it's getting steadily worse every year."

Muirsaid they're getting complaints from residents whose cars have been damaged.

"The ideal situation would be reallyto repave the whole thing, to tear the old asphalt up, grind it off and put a new coat of asphalt down and that would last for you know probably five, six years. But we have been trying to put some cold patch into some of the worst ones."

Muir said when council met just last Monday night they discussed the repairs again and instructed staff to communicate again withthe Department of Transportation to do a permanent fix on some of the potholes.

Aspokesperson for the Department of Transportation said under a winter maintenance agreement with the town of Riverview, it's up to town crews to temporarily patch potholes in the spring.

Jean-Francois Pelletier said provincial crews will be in to patch with asphalt in May, but there are no plans to repave the causeway.