A stretch of dry weather can't come soon enough for 10 public school students and their parents living in the Haldi Lake Road neighbourhood.
The school bus that usually picks them up outside their homes has been blocked the past two days by a wet gravel road that's become nearly impassible with potholes and frost heaves.
The road is so bad, one car became high-centred trying to get through. Until that road dries out, it's too soft for a city grader to plow a two-kilometre stretch of Haldi Lake Road from Leslie Road to Grouse Road. For parents with children in both high school and elementary school, that means at least four trips every school day on a billy goat track.
"The road breaks up all the time and you can hardy drive on it in our car, you have to stop and just roll because the potholes are so bad," said Lynda Elgood, who has three children who attend Vanway school. "The buses refuse to travel on it until the road is fixed. The bus driver says he won't drive it until he gets an OK from Diversified."
Diversified Transportation buses take close to 4,700 students to school on its 88 routes. The company has been serving the Haldi Lake Road area for the past two school years.
Until the road is plowed, the buses will only travel as far as the intersection with Leslie Road where the pavement on Haldi ends, three kilometres from Elgood's house. Parents now have had to get their kids to the Leslie-Haldi Lake intersection to meet the buses that take students at separate times to Vanway elementary school or College Heights secondary.
"It's a continual problem and we have to drive it every day," said Elgood. "The weather breaks it down and it's ongoing. In the summer they put down oil and it sticks to the bottom of your car, then you're covered in dust, then it rains and then you've got these huge potholes. It's best when there's snow on it because it's frozen."
City crews were out Thursday with a grader dumping gravel on Haldi Lake Road but weren't able to get past the worst section of frost heaves just before Grouse Road. There are three or four other rough sections beyond Grouse, including the area where the bus turns around.
"The subsurface is pretty wet in a lot of spots so the road is in pretty bad shape," said Diversified Transportation manager Jim Lawrence. "The city told our dispatchers they were unable to grade Haldi past Grouse because it's too soft. The drivers have been trying it for awhile but our buses could be stuck and we do break a lot of springs driving over rough roads."
Lawrence says the shortened route will only be temporary and bus service will return to normal once the road dries out and gets plowed. He said there's been one washout this spring along a Sooke Road bus route, which required a detour, but reported no other problems.
