If Ontario municipalities followed a roadbuilding standard for asphalt mix specifications, they could cut almost $1 billion on roadwork over the next decade – enough to pave 1,800 additional lane-kilometres of roads without a single new tax dollar, a report by the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis (CANCEA) finds.
Instead, each municipality and regional authority makes its own asphalt design specifications, “unique recipes” that drive up costs, delay roadbuilding completions and waste public money, says Raly Chakarova, executive director of the Toronto and Area Road Builders Association (TARBA), which commissioned the report.
She says the association expected the report’s analysis would show “some kind of savings” from harmonization but was surprised at “the sheer size” of money it found.
Chakarova says that municipalities spend on average 7.7 per cent of their annual capital budgets on paving and repairing roads but the variations in asphalt mix designs require suppliers to change materials, equipment and testing procedures in different municipalities, sometimes a number of times per day.
“It’s a little crazy when you think about it because the use for the road is the same. The only thing that has changed is that it crosses a (municipal) border.”
Gianni Cotognini, purchasing/project manager of roadwork for Condrain Group, is not surprised by the report’s findings.
He says municipalities often get recommendations from an engineer or asphalt cement supplier on asphalt specifications, “leading to 60 different mixes in the GTA plus. These mixes and this confusion add costs down the line.”
Contractors, for example, require specific asphalt cements for each mix design, different stone and can face additional consulting costs, Cotognini says.
He points to a contract in Vaughan in which the Region of York changed its specifications (from a Marshall to a Superpave mix) after the contract was awarded “and now we’re stuck with a mix that needs to be replaced.”
The change requires extended lane closures and could impact quality and schedule as the temperatures drop.
“A lot of the pavers (companies) now build in factors for a ‘rip and replace’ (into bids) because these mixes are so hard to achieve.”
Suppliers and contractors in the GTA alone serve 28 regional and municipal authorities, says Chakarova.
She says a lot of the savings through standardized designs could come in production.
A plant can be “in efficient production mode” all the time with a standard mix but efficiency drops when plants have to retool for different mix designs, which can happen multiple times a day, says Taylor Lefebre, director of quality and production, Eastern Canada, for Green Infrastructure Partners Inc. (GIP).
GIP has seven asphalt plants in the GTA and north to Barrie.
“We have staff dedicated to find out what mix to produce because we don’t know which one of many variations of one blend that we might need to make,” which depends on location, he says.
He cites a job where GIP was required to make four separate asphalt mixes for one intersection that crossed over municipality boundaries.
Production costs are higher for small multiple mixes like the intersection job because there is some wastage on every new asphalt batch produced, he points out.
Chakarova adds in the current environment of multiple asphalt designs, additional costs and complexities result because responsibilities include more testing, different contract documents and additional performance testing and life cycle analysis.
“We are literally paving roads the hard way.”
The CANCEA report takes into account price differentials in design mixes, cost variations in mix testing, liability and risk plus costs for stripping a paved road if it doesn’t meet a municipality’s standard.
Lefebre suggests hesitancy by municipalities to conform to standard mixes might stem partly from poor quality issues cropping up with blends decades ago.
There has been “a huge amount of quality improvement by producers since then.”
Further rationale for the multitude of recipes on the market, he suggests could be because many municipalities have fewer technical experts on staff in budget-paring times. They rely on consultants for asphalt, concrete and granular product specifications.
Chakarova is optimistic things changes will happen.
The Protect Ontario by Building Faster and Smarter Act, 2025, passed in June, is aimed at accelerating housing and infrastructure and TARBA has been involved in consultations to establish a framework for standardized roadbuilding practices, she says.
The shift away from standardized mixes happened when transportation works were downloaded by the province to municipalities, she says.
Cotognini says key factors in determining asphalt specifications are traffic loading and climatic region. Colder temperatures require “more flexible” mixes but because there are no major temperature variations in the Greater Toronto Area and as far north as Barrie, Cotognini questions why not use a mix designed to cover the region.
That would minimize the amount of asphalt cement producers have to carry.
Cotognini says municipalities need “to get their head out of the sand and collaborate.”
He adds there should be more focus on environmental practices such as the use of recycled asphalt, rather than a multitude of mix designs that require more natural resources.
Chakarova says asphalt is just one part of the standardization process needed in roadbuilding.
“If we standardized roadbuilding throughout the region we would be looking at almost $12 billion in broader gains.”
