Road work lowers infrastructure age; but bridges still deteriorating

OTTAWA — Investments in Canada’s bridges and overpasses has been below the level required to hold their age constant — with Quebec housing the most structures beyond their useful life, according to a report by Stats Canada.

The report examines age status and trends in five key public infrastructures — highways and roads, bridges and overpasses, water supply systems, wastewater treatment facilities and sanitary and storm sewers — from a provincial perspective and compares average ages with the useful life of each infrastructure.

According to the study, the average age of public infrastructure has been falling almost steadily in most provinces for the past seven years, mainly due to large investments in highways and roads in Quebec and Ontario.

Canada’s highways and road systems makes
up 60 percent of all infrastructure.

In 2007, the average age of Canada’s public infrastructure reached 16.3 years, down from its peak of 17.5 in 2000.

Highways and roads, the largest component of the five public assets, saw its average age increase steadily from the beginning of the 1970s to a peak of 16.9 years in 1994; by 2007, it had shortened to 14.9 years. The nation’s system of highways and roads was valued at $170.1 billion in 2007, representing 59 percent of the total of the five public assets.

Unlike roads, however, investments in bridges has not kept up with their age. The average age of this asset rose by 3.2 years over a 22-year period, from 21.3 years in 1985 to 24.5 years in 2007. In 2007, the ratio of average age over useful life for Canada’s bridges had passed 57 percent.

By 2007, bridges and overpasses in Quebec had passed 72 percent of their useful life, the highest ratio in the nation, compared with 57 percent nationally. The only other provinces to record negative growth rates during this period were Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.

Since 2001, the average age of roads dropped in all provinces except PEI and Newfoundland. Quebec, while painfully slow to react to bridges, accounted for more than half of the reduction in highway age. During this seven-year period, the average age of roads in Quebec fell by 2.8 years, from 18.0 years in 2001 to 15.2 years in 2007.

There were also large declines in Nova Scotia, where the average age fell by 2.2 years, as well as in Saskatchewan (-1.8 years).

Canada’s roads had passed just over half (53%) of their useful life in 2007. This ratio ranged from a low of 49% in Ontario and Prince Edward Island to 61% in Manitoba.

Manitoba had the nation’s oldest road network in 2007, even though the average age has edged down from 18.1 years to 17.1 years since 2001.