Ask-NAMS-Canada

Hello everyone,

I am from Ontario Canada and would like to know  your thoughts on the following. This came up for discussion with my manager

A) Do you take road expansion projects for Lifecycle costing. As these are funded by development charges my manager feels that they are growth projects and hence there is no definite timeline or if those projects can happen. I agree with her on that level however if the expansion projects are related to expanding an existing infrastructure like rehabilitation of a major arterial road to accommodate the increase in traffic then it should be part of the lifecycle cost

B) On the Operations and Maintenance , do you take winter control as part of operations and maintenance activity and I strongly feel that winter control on roads in ontario should be part of O&M because if the town acquires another 10 kms of road from the developer, then the town is bound to do winter maintenance on the road. It is the same like road sweeping, debris pickup or asphalt maintenance.

Please let me know your thoughts

thanks
Arun

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Arun Chulliyil
Town of New Tecumseth
Canada
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In the City of Ottawa's Asset Management Branch, we separate roads into those contributed by developers (usually in local subdivisions) and those built directly by the city (usually arterial and collector links). We also separate the road base from the road pavement as different assets, since after a couple of years you have to do minor rehabilitation which replaces the pavement but leaves the road base. Both assets have a unit cost associated with them that we can use to determine the replacement cost for a section of road base and/or pavement. It varies from year to year, but we can forecast how much additional road network will be added over a 10 year period and plan for road maintenance budget increases during that time.

Once the roads are included in the system, Public works adds them to their network and they have their own calculations as to what snow removal level and general annual maintenance needs to be performed on the new road sections. There is also the case of the boundary roads that split Ottawa from the surrounding townships that need to be accounted for - usually the surrounding municipalities will pay for the City of Ottawa to maintain those sections of road during the winter.

I hope this is useful for you.

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Brad Bellows
City of Ottawa
Ottawa AB
Canada
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Hi Brad,

Thank you for the insights on how you handle the road projects at Ottawa. We do have in our inventory to seperate roads based on arterial, collector, local and then private and generally put all the unassumed roads as private till they are assumed.

thank you
Arun

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Arun Chulliyil
Town of New Tecumseth
Canada
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Original Message:
Sent: 11-03-2021 04:00
From: Brad Bellows
Subject: Expansion projects on Roads and Winter Maintenance activity

In the City of Ottawa's Asset Management Branch, we separate roads into those contributed by developers (usually in local subdivisions) and those built directly by the city (usually arterial and collector links). We also separate the road base from the road pavement as different assets, since after a couple of years you have to do minor rehabilitation which replaces the pavement but leaves the road base. Both assets have a unit cost associated with them that we can use to determine the replacement cost for a section of road base and/or pavement. It varies from year to year, but we can forecast how much additional road network will be added over a 10 year period and plan for road maintenance budget increases during that time.

Once the roads are included in the system, Public works adds them to their network and they have their own calculations as to what snow removal level and general annual maintenance needs to be performed on the new road sections. There is also the case of the boundary roads that split Ottawa from the surrounding townships that need to be accounted for - usually the surrounding municipalities will pay for the City of Ottawa to maintain those sections of road during the winter.

I hope this is useful for you.

------------------------------
Brad Bellows
City of Ottawa
Ottawa AB
Canada
------------------------------

Hi Arun, Newmarket has taken the approach of accounting for winter plowing as part of road operations and our road level of service. With the new minimum maintenance standard, we are also tracking the activities and LoS for sidewalk plow and bikelane plowing/sweeping. We are also breaking down "salt runs" and "plow runs" separately, as salt runs are more frequent. I agree that this is part of AM as it is an activity required to deliver on the objectives of the infrastructure.

Each municipality is different, but it might also be worth looking at sweeping. Some municipalities charges this to stormwater, others charge it to roads. In Newmarket it is part of stormwater, although the cost has not been fully accounted for yet in our rate studies. Levels of Service do become a factor here in terms of whether it is most applicable to stormwater (rate supported) or roads (tax supported). Arguably, the "spring clean up" for street sweeping is to support stormwater to keep drainage features clean, however you could also argue that this is a by-product of winter roads and should therefore be charged to roads. If you do more than one street sweeping pass per year (e.g. a summer or fall second run, or an enhanced LoS in your downtown), these activities are less applicable to stormwater but we have not moved to this level of detail yet.

I have not studied our development charges in detail yet, but I understand some reserves are levied for these assets. I have heard conflicting information from other departments on if our DCs cover operations like winter plowing for new subdivisions but I would like to learn and confirm this, let me know what the situation is in your municipality.

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Erik Wright
Town of Newmarket
Asset Management Specialist
Richmond Hill ON
Canada
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Hi Erik

Thank you for your inputs on how you handle winter maintenance at the Town of Newmarket. I also feel strongly that any kind of maintenance irrrespective of roads or stormwater should be part of lifecycle costs. This way we are able to put in a more accurate value to the lifecycle costs and helps during budget discussions.

Also I liked your response to Claudia on the assumed roads from developers. However in our town, we have expansion projects on our existing roads that is due to growth in the town and they are funded by DC. So we had discussion if this needs to be part of lifecycle costs and I feel that as they are existing infrastructure, we should be including them irrespective of what triggers these expansion and how they are funded. This will again ensure that our 10 year frame on lifecycle cost  is accurate . we can also change this as we know how these projects develop. I also feel that it is better to overstate than understate especially when we put in as long term financial plan.

thanks

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Arun Chulliyil
Town of New Tecumseth
Canada
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 11-03-2021 14:23
From: Erik Wright
Subject: Expansion projects on Roads and Winter Maintenance activity

Hi Arun, Newmarket has taken the approach of accounting for winter plowing as part of road operations and our road level of service. With the new minimum maintenance standard, we are also tracking the activities and LoS for sidewalk plow and bikelane plowing/sweeping. We are also breaking down "salt runs" and "plow runs" separately, as salt runs are more frequent. I agree that this is part of AM as it is an activity required to deliver on the objectives of the infrastructure.

Each municipality is different, but it might also be worth looking at sweeping. Some municipalities charges this to stormwater, others charge it to roads. In Newmarket it is part of stormwater, although the cost has not been fully accounted for yet in our rate studies. Levels of Service do become a factor here in terms of whether it is most applicable to stormwater (rate supported) or roads (tax supported). Arguably, the "spring clean up" for street sweeping is to support stormwater to keep drainage features clean, however you could also argue that this is a by-product of winter roads and should therefore be charged to roads. If you do more than one street sweeping pass per year (e.g. a summer or fall second run, or an enhanced LoS in your downtown), these activities are less applicable to stormwater but we have not moved to this level of detail yet.

I have not studied our development charges in detail yet, but I understand some reserves are levied for these assets. I have heard conflicting information from other departments on if our DCs cover operations like winter plowing for new subdivisions but I would like to learn and confirm this, let me know what the situation is in your municipality.

------------------------------
Erik Wright
Town of Newmarket
Asset Management Specialist
Richmond Hill ON
Canada
------------------------------