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City roads are showing the damaging toll of what seemed like an endless winter, as crews scramble following a late start to repair a wide network of punishing potholes on Calgary streets.

Adding to the driving peril was a 12-metre-wide, but not too terribly deep, sinkhole that appeared during Wednesday’s morning commute on 9th Avenue S.W. in the downtown, snarling traffic for much of the day on the busy thoroughfare.

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Tara Norton-Merrin, a spokeswoman for the city’s roads department, said repair crews have been challenged this year to respond to pothole complaints as a particularly frigid winter prevented them from doing spot repairs during warmer periods, which occurred infrequently over the winter months.

“Usually we’ll do pothole repairs in the winter during chinooks, but even when we didn’t have snow, the pavement really never got above zero degrees,” she said.

“The numbers this year are on par with the previous year, but we expect people will think there are much more because we weren’t able to get to them.”