Montreal is using cold asphalt to patch up its potholes. Will it last?

Here is how the City of Montreal aims to patch up its potholes over eight days.

The city of Montreal is entering an eight-day pothole repair blitz.

In the interest of speed, the city has decided to use cold asphalt mixture to fill the holes — a material that critics say does not offer a long-term fix.

The cheapest and most effective way to repair a pothole is to pour hot asphalt directly into the hole, smooth it out and tamp it down. But it’s slow.

Instead, the city opted for a quick fix.

“It’s easy to store. available. easily implementable and allows it to do the greatest number of potholes in any given time,” said Alan DeSousa, executive committee member at the City of Montreal.

But in neighbouring Côte Saint-Luc, cold asphalt was abandoned as even a temporary solution years ago.

“It never hardens. When cars are driving over this temporary cold mix, it disintegrates, comes apart, and your pothole returns,” said John Monteiro, operations manager at Côte Saint-Luc public works.

Monteiro says crews were going back multiple times per winter to repair the same pothole.

For quick fixes, the city uses a Quebec-made product called Pavtech that he says actually lasts.

“We won’t get hot asphalt for one or two potholes. We’ll use the Pavtech product. It’s great,” said Monteiro.

Pavtech comes in a bag and can be dumped directly into a pothole.

The difference is it fuses to the existing asphalt and dries in less than an hour.

“All the little particles are so bond together that you have no air gaps in the product. So, the water will not infiltrate through the gaps causing the breakage and the pavement to break off,” said Pavtech managing partner Norm Van Der Elst.

Monteiro says it can sometimes even be hard to tell if a patch-up job was done with Pavtech or asphalt.

Pavtech is a more expensive product twice the price of a bag of cold asphalt and 10 times more than hot asphalt.

But Monteiro says it’s a useful tool.

“You can get it done in 20 minutes, whereas on asphalt, yes, it’s ten times cheaper, but you have to plan,” he said.

The city of Montreal says some boroughs are testing Pavtech.

DeSousa says for the upcoming blitz, he is confident with the city’s strategy.

“I do believe that we’re going to be doing whatever gets the best results,” he said.

He expects the work will continue until the summer months, when it’s possible to do permanent repairs.