Duane Hicks
Individuals in orange safety garb intently surveying sidewalks have become a more common sight as the town’s resumes its annual program to mark surface discontinuities with paint.
Since 2011, the town’s engineering department has conducted the marking program–making uneven joints in local sidewalks easier for pedestrians to spot.
The town does this each year to meet minimum maintenance standards for municipal highways, as per Section 16.1 of the Municipal Act, which states all surface discontinuities exceeding two cm must be marked with paint.
A discontinuity is where there is a crack or joint in the sidewalk, with the height difference between the two sides exceeding two cm.
But since the discontinuities can’t always be fixed each year, the same ones may be re-painted time and again.
“We try to replace the worst sections of sidewalk as time and budgets allow,” Operations and Facilities manager Travis Rob explained.
“We discontinued our program of having the concrete shaved as this was extremely costly,” he added.
For the most part, the town has been addressing uneven sidewalks just as it’s been rebuilding roads–in conjunction with sewer and water infrastructure replacement projects.
This way, the work all gets done in one shot–the most cost-efficient way of doing so.
The town started doing the marking program after a new section was added to the highway standards portion of the Municipal Act.
That section states that if a surface discontinuity exceeds two cm (or about .75 inches), the town must alert users’ attention to it within 14 days of becoming aware of it.
The section also states the town must make such inspections once per year.
