ASK Salt Spring: Answered - Ep. 47 Andrew Gaetz

Episode Date: November 9, 2024

Damian Inwood talks to Andrew Gaetz, South Vancouver Island operations manager for Emcon, which hadles repairs and maintenance of Salt Spring Island's road network.

You're listening to episode 47 of Ask Salt Spring Answered when we talked to Andrew Goetz, who is the operations manager for Emcon for the Salt Spring area. And we talked to him about all kinds of things, including street sweeping, snow clearing, and paving of streets and pothole filling. Right. I'm here with Andrew Goetz, who is the operations manager for MCON for the South Island zone, I guess it's called, or district. We were just in Ask Salt Spring, and a number of issues came up. Actually, I thought it was kind of a slightly less confrontational session sometimes. No, yeah. You know, there's often been people in with a lot of complaints,

and it seemed like most people actually didn't have too many complaints. Now, one thing you did mention though you were talking about um graffiti on the road uh itself on the pavement right that seems to be something that sprung up on salt spring lately yeah it's been a recent issue for sure yeah and what is the issue for you guys obviously you have to paint over it um it means blockages of traffic and that kind of thing. That's it. And it cost to you obviously out of your budget which is already stretched to the limit right? Exactly so it's it's time that we could be fixing other issues. It's crew safety because they have to get out and stop the traffic and in some dangerous spots so it's it's concerning for sure and how long does it take

to fix something like that if somebody puts a like a sign on the road saying uh you know free palestine or whatever it happens to be yeah so it could be a couple of hours it's kind of it could depend on on the scale of it um i think the one spot that they had to do, uh, quite a few weeks back now, but they actually had to do it in the middle of the night because it was in a really dangerous spot kind of at the top of the hill where, you know, somebody wouldn't see them. Was that the one on Robinson? Which was that? I think so. I'm not a hundred percent sure. Yeah. And that would mean overtime and stuff too, I guess. So even more expensive probably. Right.

Okay, and I think you said it would probably take, it doesn't sound like a lot of money, but 500 bucks for a normal... It's not even necessarily a money thing, but it's something. It's time. Time I can't replace. Time and danger, yeah. Okay, and then another thing that you were talking about, which I hadn't heard before, was that people seem to like to throw signs into the bush or into the ditch

if they don't like what they tell them they have to do. Tell me a bit more about that. What sort of things are we talking about? Yeah, so cones marking road hazards or what have you. Anytime we have to close a road, it's not something that we take lightly, but it's in the name of public safety. So if somebody doesn't agree with why our road is closed, they may take our sign and throw it in the bush and then we have to pay to replace that. And also it compromises the effectiveness of that road closure and compromises public safety. Right. And you said that Salt Spring is particularly bad for that, right?

I said in the instance of the 2021 floods, we definitely noticed it being an issue. We don't have a lot of road closures in that kind of, that was a big emergency situation where we had to kind of leave the signs and move along. But yeah, it was a lot of, I guess, just disrespect as to what we were trying to do, which was just trying to keep people safe. Right. And of course, you have to replace these signs and that's a cost to you again, right? Yes, if they're damaged or stolen or, you know, we can't find them. Right.

And did you mention Isabella Point Road as one of the places that was happening or was that in relation to something else? It was one of the, Isabella Point Road was a spot where we got hit really hard. They had a lot of really catastrophic road failures, and there was a few individuals. I don't know if they lived up that way or what the deal was, but they definitely drove through some very unsafe road conditions even after our crew tried to stop them.

Right. And you said their people were super rude to some of your crew people too right yeah it happens a lot unfortunately in road maintenance yeah well that's a that's awful thing to hear about salt spring really but anyway um now you you also mentioned that um you you're feeling that the pavement is timing out not just on salt spring but Spring, but in a lot of areas on southern Vancouver Island. Why is that? Is that because there was a big push, you think, to replace all the roads 40 years ago or however long? My assumption, there's a lot of really aged pavement.

There's a lot of pavement distress, but also just the visible age of it. It's old, and it's time it needs to be replaced. And what's the lifespan of pavement usually? I think the provincial government has an asphalt maintenance book, actually, and it is an expectation that they would get 30 years out of a lifespan of pavement right right okay of course that's always dependent on traffic volumes types and then the type of asphalt but 30 years should be an expectation yeah now everybody wants their road road to be paved obviously and you wish you could do more but i was surprised when you said that in fact your budget only allows you to do approximately

600 meters of paving uh if if you're going for a seven meter wide uh paving uh a year is that um that that's not much is it it's not a lot um but it is uh i think a fair amount when you look at my budget as a whole um for the salt spring area like i said in our meeting i try and divvy up my budget by road kilometer so um i I have a lot of road kilometers to look after in our area and just not enough money to go around, unfortunately, which I could do more. Right. Yeah. And, um, you said up there on your list for, for upcoming paving is, um, part of Atkins road, right? That would be one that, um, we we've definitely got high on our priority list because it is a sort of main thoroughfare that would be access to Ganges, right? Yeah.

Is it in particular? I mean, I drive it quite frequently. I didn't notice it was in terrible shape, but is it? It's at a point where we look at pavement. It starts with tiny fractures, and then those fractures start to expand as the water gets in there and the freeze and the thaw. And then once the fractures get big enough and the cracks get big enough, then pieces start coming out. And then we've got the potholes and the real

problems. So trying to get that before it becomes such a problem for the public is kind of what we would like to see. Right. And of course, pothole patching is a constant thing you have to do, right? Absolutely. Yeah. I think you said that Salt Spring Island is number three on your list of places. Out of the entire service area, they're our top three spender. Yep. It's a big budget, isn't it it for pothole fixing i mean a big part of your budget anyway it's massive yeah um it would probably equate to about eight percent of my entire budget right wow and that's for snow plowing mowing paving everything right right yeah okay uh blaine road you mentioned too as a possible place for

for some work being done blaine yes we've been looking at a section and doing some pavement patching there as well yep right and that's because of is that because of the gravel from the legion parking lot uh not specific because but there is a drainage issue and then there's just a section of pavement that's virtually gone in one entire lane so so you know that's gonna be on the list too okay mm-hmm all right now you were asked about Drake Road which of course is a scene of a lot of a lot of development right now with the BC housing putting in 32 units of housing there, plus other development in the works, I think.

And you said you'd have to wait on that because there's so much heavy construction vehicles going up and down there, it would just rip the road apart if you put in a new one, right? Yeah, absolutely. It's a common construction practice. You get all of your property development done and then pave at the end so that the um the trucks don't wreck the new pavement and stays fresh and nice longer right there are two other things that came up one was about street sweeping um and you uh told i think

about this new bicycle sweeper which i haven't actually seen yet but um at this point you only sweep like once a year is that correct that's what we're yeah by contract yes yeah yeah so uh there's apparently a small tractor too i hadn't heard about this were they talking about some other vehicle i think they were talking about looking at purchasing one possibly okay yeah yeah that hasn't happened yet so any volunteers who want to get out and sweep the streets, they're welcome to do so, or is it a liability issue? Certainly not a liability from my perspective. Volunteers should seek permission from the Ministry of Transportation

because I understand the public property, but if they're going to do work on Ministry of Transportation roadways, seek permission. All the power to you. Yeah. Now, we're coming up to wintertime, obviously, and if there is snow, then snow plowing is always a hot topic. People always think their street should be plowed first. What's your policy on that? You obviously go for the main highways first and then...

That's right. Yeah. So we have highway classifications that the Ministry of Transportation establishes, and then we follow those in order of priority. And then you're going to see like downtown Ganges is going to be a top priority, branching out to like ferry routes, making sure all of those real main connectors like Vesuvius Bay Road, Fulford Ganges Road, Long Harbor Road. I think North End holds a pretty high priority. So those are all of our sort of connectors. And then school bus routes. Those are our next priority. So our crew is really good when we switch over to winter having that 24-7 coverage and um and looking after those school bus routes before school bus routes school buses start to run yeah and presumably transit bus

routes too oh yeah inclusive yeah yeah now um i did i hear this right but you said that um people have been phoning in emergencies to try and get their or fake emergencies to try and get their streets plowed what kind of things are they are they saying um yeah medical emergencies um things like that uh obviously um if i was in medical distress i would probably phone an ambulance first and foremost, not the snowplow contractor. So we do monitor because we get hundreds of phone calls in a snowstorm and we do monitor our call logs for fire, RCMP, BC ambulance, like the major emergency services, those ones we respond to immediately um obviously uh you know if you're phoning in and you have a medical emergency those are you know the entities 9-1-1's where you're going to phone and they'll connect with us directly so does it just to out of interest if

if say i have a heart attack and my wife calls the ambulance will they then check in with you to see if the road's been plowed or not and ask you to plow it or yeah we've literally put a plow truck in front of an ambulance um or a fire truck or whatever if there's an emergency we will respond but um calling in a fake emergency means that our snow plow comes off of its route. Now that main route isn't getting maintained. They're chasing an emergency situation or what they think is. And, um, it kind of just defeats the whole system. Right. So the message is to be patient and to be thoughtful to other people too. Absolutely. In the middle of a snowstorm, uh, it's going to be hectic. It's just the way it is. And after the snow finishes, our crew is really good.

They work 24 hours a day. They are hardworking people. And usually within two to three days, we've got every road plowed out is like the expectation. Right. After the snow is finished. Yeah, I think we really appreciate how how the crew works for us absolutely yeah thank you okay great well thanks for coming in andrew and um you've been listening to ask salt spring answered on cheer fm the voice of the southern gulf islands

thank you very much yeah thank you