The year potholes met their patch
Driver complaints fall as mild weather lets city stay ahead of the game
Drivers are cashing a big dividend from the mild winter in the form of smoother streets and fewer potholes.
If it feels like our roads aren’t as bumpy as usual at this time of year, it is no illusion. The conditions needed to grow potholes — snow, frost in the ground and lots of freeze-and-thaw cycles — never arrived this winter.
The city normally gears up for its annual war on potholes in March, but the absence of wintry weather allowed the crusade to begin before Christmas and carry on throughout the winter.
“We just haven’t had the weather that makes potholes,” said Myles Currie, the city’s director of transportation services.
“The staff that would usually be busy with snow-clearing or other jobs related to winter weather have been available to patch potholes, so we’ve been able to keep up with them.”
There have been winters when our inbox and phone line were jammed with reader complaints about potholes, sometimes 20 or more in a day. But we’ve barely had a complaint this year.
In a regular winter, Currie said, he’d be hard pressed to deploy 10 crews of two to three workers to patch potholes across the entire city during January and February. But this winter, as many as 25 crews have been available to patch potholes most days, which gave them a huge head start that they’ve been able to maintain ever since, he said.
Last winter, road workers patched 29,325 potholes between Jan. 1 and Feb. 27. In that same period this year, they filled 37,876, Currie said — even though there were fewer holes appearing to begin with.
Potholes are created through a vile combination of moisture from snow or rain, road salt and a relentless pounding from the wheels of passing vehicles.
On a typical winter day, salt spreaders hit the road after a snowfall and douse the streets, helping snow and ice to melt in warmer daytime weather. The moisture works its way into the pavement and accumulates in holes and low spots, loosening the edges. When the temperature drops at night, the moisture freezes and expands, further loosening the asphalt. Constant traffic causes crumbling, particularly around the edges of holes and seams between lanes and cement curbs. Roadside snow banks don’t help. They constantly leach salty water into the curb, where it corrodes the edges of the pavement. But they’ve been scarce this year. The average cost to fill a pothole this winter is $23.48, a significant hike over the $20.71 average last year. Currie attributes the difference mainly to higher fuel and asphalt costs, a reflection of increased oil prices. With a big leg up on potholes, Currie says the city will probably be able to start spring road construction sooner, which means more lane reductions and traffic backups are just around the corner. It’s the price to be paid for such a gentle winter.
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