More often than not when you leave your house this time of year, you'll run into a detour. 

That's because the City of Moose Jaw is committed to completing a large portion of road work this year that not only includes leveling and paving streets but also sidewalk work and painting roadways. 

City Engineer Josh Mickleborough said they're about 80% done what they set out to complete this summer and continue work while Mother Nature will allow it. More specifically, they are halfway done back lane grading, 80% done line painting lanes and crosswalks, and have completed just under 10% of their road renewal projects, but they've also had to deal with manhole covers while they can.

Mickleborough noted that manhole repairs have taken up a lot of their time in the past few weeks, with 16 already repaired this season. 

"I would probably chalk it up to two reasons. One, it's old infrastructure so it could be failing - you know, we find manholes with no bottoms in them and the brick or concrete rotting, that kind of thing. The other is probably just the changes in moisture cycles and soil conditions would cause them to move like that."

And like in years past, water main breaks have increased this year and we're set to once again break last year's record. 

"We always talk about water main breaks and we are up to 55 this year, so that's on par for last year which isn't a good thing. But that's a fraction of what we are out there repairing right, we have got infrastructure failing, we have service connections failing storm sewers manholes, a variety of those underground valves, we have got challenges with valves."

But something that almost everyone can agree on is Moose Jaw saw a lot of potholes to start summer once the snow melted. Mickleborough said they've fixed well over one thousand so far and do their best to respond to complaints on main roadways.

"They are pretty diligent. They have knocked off about 1400 potholes this year so they stay busy, obviously, and they focus on the busy streets' work through a bit of a rotation. They are trying to keep them patched up and we do respond to bad ones."

The City plans to have 25 km of road repairs done this year, but with High Street being made a priority, they have only completed about 2.2 km and plan to have the majority of renewals done before the season ends.