After a long, hard winter, road crews around the Maritimes are finally starting to make some progress on potholes.

There are ruts and craters in every community, but the streets are especially bad in Saint John. The city expects to spend millions of dollars to fix roads damaged by the thousands of trucks needed to remove snow during one of the worst winters the city has ever seen.

“You’ve got that much more snowplows on the road this winter, trucks taking snow away, just a lot of heavy equipment,” says CAA’s Gary Howard. “So, the damage to the roads is now surprising at all, and they’re late simply because they couldn’t get to the roads.”

Some streets have deteriorated so badly they are past the point of patching and the only option is full reconstruction.

“The problem is, if you don’t repair the roads in a timely manner, they fall into the reconstruction category, at four to five times the cost to get that road back up to standard,” says Kevin Rice, the city’s transportation commissioner.

The city expects to spend up to $7 million repairing and reconstructing streets this year.

“The roads are terrible this year. It’s going to loosen up the front ends of the vehicles,” says resident Gerard Arsenault. “It’s hard on tires. I already replaced the tires on this vehicle.”

“It was a bad winter, but that has nothing to do with the potholes,” suggests motorist Fred Raynes. “That should have been fixed a long time ago. They should be beyond that.”

As of Tuesday morning, road crews in Saint John had filled 624 potholes, but that’s just the beginning of their lengthy to-do list.

Meanwhile, the city is asking residents to report potholes by visiting its website, or by emailing or phoning the pothole hotline.

“People feel the impact of poor roads on a daily basis on their commute and it’s a pet peeve for everyone,” says Rice.

“They want to see good roads. They pay their taxes and it’s a priority for them.”

With files from CTV Atlantic's Mike Cameron