Mayor Don Iveson bracing for an awful pothole spring.

Constant freezing and thawing on Edmonton roads has given early rise to a particularly terrible season for potholes, according to Mayor DonIveson.

Im seeing it on the street like everybody else. These wild temperature swings were seeing right now are justjackhammeringthe roads, he said.

Im bracing myself for an awful pothole spring.

Road maintenance director BobDunfordsaid the city had filled approximately 1,700 potholes by the end of a January, an unusually high number for this time of year.

Normally wed be facing this in midto late March, he said.

Last year, the city filed a total of 485,000 potholes,Dunfordsaid.

Councils $55-million investment into arterial road renewal should ease the problem in the next few years, he said.

Potholes are a symptom of the condition of the pavement, he said.It can only get better from here.

Ivesonsaid the city has already begun aggressively repaving aging roads.

All we can hope for is that itll be a little bit better, because weve been doing so much paving and the newer roads will hold up a little bit better to this, he said.

Dunfordsaid the trade off for fewer potholes in the future will be more construction.

You will be seeing a lot of detouring, a lot of road work going on, but its a necessary thing to get our pavement back into the kind of condition that they should be in.

The city hopes that less than10 per cent of arterial roads will need renewal by 2019, compared to the18 per cent that needed such work in 2013.