pothole.info

In cities, counties and rural areas where roads have recently received a nice, smooth resurfacing of clean asphalt, one problem for motorists still remains. It’s rough railroad crossings, the jarring experience of passing over the damaging, uneven surfaces immediately surrounding railway lines. Whether that crossing is at-grade or slightly elevated, it appears to be a cruel joke. The  car or truck might be traveling at a good clip, with no…

The record level of snowfall along the eastern corridor at the end of October 2011 caused enough damage on its own. Millions of homes and businesses went without electrical power as a result of downed power lines. As fall turns into winter, we’re reminded that where nature intersects with civilization, man-made things have a tendency to fall apart. This snowstorm did the region the disfavor of arriving while the leaves…

The way money is allocated in most cash-strapped cities, counties and townships across America, it often seems like a matter of splitting hairs. But the Butcher Road Pothole of 2011 in Columbiana County, Ohio really came down to splitting a road. All in the name of fiscal responsibility. A brouhaha erupted in the summer, when a pothole plaguing motorists seemed to be getting bigger while it was officially ignored. Citizens…

In case you didn’t like potholes in the winter of 2010-2011, there is a reason you’ll dislike potholes even more in the winter of 2011-2012. Here’s why: Potholes destroy tires, and the price of tires is rising sharply due to a supply shortage of natural rubber (yes, it still comes from trees, mostly in southeast Asia) and increasing demand from China, where car ownership is undergoing double-digit growth. Petroleum is…

In a city like New York there is a subterranean world. Pet alligators once flushed down toilets are rumored to roam the sewers – an apocryphal tale – and the drinking water system is said to leak like a sieve (true, as it turns out). There is evidence of secret tunnels in Queens connecting what once were two forts (Totten and Schuyler). “Invisible New York – The Hidden Infrastructure of the City”…

Some pictures are worth a thousands words. This one might save you a thousand bucks. Technically speaking we’re talking about a graphic, not a picture per sé. It is a black silhouette (on an orange field) of a car is tipped into a crevice of broken pavement in such a way that the words “look out!” come to mind. It’s a pothole warning symbol, of the type that would be…

When champion triathlete Linda Neary was on the road to victory at the 2003 Publix Family Fitness Weekend Coca-Cola Classic Triathlon Series in Nassau, Bahamas, she stopped during the run to check up on her closest competitor, Lotte Branigan of Vero Beach. Why? Branigan had fallen from tripping in a pothole on the course. “I fell like that in Hawaii,” remarked Neary, who beat second-place finisher Branigan by a bare…

On July 16 and 17 (2011), much of the country was riveted on “Carmageddon,” an orchestrated shutdown of ten miles of I-405 (the San Diego Freeway) between I-10 (Santa Monica Freeway) and US-101 (Ventura Freeway). Caltrans, the California state highways department in charge of the highway and repairs, conducted this major project over the two-day weekend to ultimately improve traffic flow with HOV (high occupancy vehicles) lanes, improve bridges, realign…

Temperature extremes have a way of driving innovation. The Inuit, centuries before there were Ray Bans, would strap bone, tusks or bark to their faces, with a thin slit cut to allow their eyes to peer out. This would protect them from snow blindness, a real malady when a landscape of clean white snow and blinding sunshine would coincide. Perhaps it was something far ahead of its time: They looked…

Reports in July 2011 that a community college student has filed a $375,000 lawsuit against her school in Eugene, Oregon should not surprise too many people. The student tripped in a 6-inch-by-1-inch pothole next to where she parked, leading to $14,000 in medical costs. Perhaps what was most newsworthy about the case is the student has a disabling bone disease – and the pothole was adjacent to her handicapped parking space.…

For U.S. motorists in any parts of the million-square-mile area under the heat dome of 2011 – with temperatures in the 90s and 100s (Fahrenheit), and heat indices 20 and 30 points higher in some places – there’s more to worry about than engine coolant and functioning air conditioners. Add exploding potholes to the list. Actually, it’s pavement that is exploding, leaving potholes in its wake. This largely occurs with…

One sign the pothole problem in Europe is increasing is when researchers come up with new and novel ways of managing them. In this case, it involves brightly colored asphalt. In Europe, potholes are no less a problem than in the U.S. Roads built there before and after World War II are reaching the latter stages of their expected lifespan, and money is lacking to keep up on repairs. (more…)

When the City of New York repaved a section of Fifth Avenue twenty years ago along the front of the Plaza Hotel with something called glassphalt, the pavement sparkled from tiny flecks of recycled glass in the aggregate mix. But it was neither the recycled nature of the glass, nor the resilience with which the material can stand up to the traffic and temperature swings of the Big Apple, that…

In the past month, for the second time in the two-and-a-half-year-old Obama Administration, discussion of a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) scheme to supplement or replace the gas tax floated up – and then disappeared rather quickly. As reported in Transportation Weekly in early May, about $300 million would be allocated in the Transportation Opportunities Act to study a VMT system. Such a miles-traveled program would charge motorists for actual use…

Linking the quality of roads, bridges and rail to his state’s global competitiveness, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley has told business leaders that the state needs to find a way to raise $800 million addition dollars to invest in infrastructure. The Democratic governor’s remarks were made in early May before the Maryland Chamber of Commerce. His comments regarding this increased investment in infrastructure were within a list of what he called…

A pothole by definition is a problem. No one intends for a pothole to form and exist – they are not here by intent. Unfortunately, the technology does not yet exist to build impenetrable pavement because all roads are subject to inevitable atrophy. The best we can hope is to minimize pothole formation for as long as possible. To know the best ways to fix potholes – and prevent them…

President Obama wants to blame Republicans, but a major opportunity to repair infrastructure was missed in 2009 President Obama threw the lowly pothole into the lofty debates on the future of our country on April 18 when he suggested that Republican-led budget cuts will further the crumbling of infrastructure, leading to “potholes everywhere.” Really? Mr. President, the potholes are hardly the sole fault of the Republicans. With all due respect,…

They’re everywhere and they never seem to completely go away. They make us mad, damage our cars and often are cause for rerouting. “They” are potholes. So it’s time that there be a full accounting of potholes everywhere. If you live in a northern climate, you know that winter and spring bring a whole new crop. If you live in a warmer, southern climate, there are plenty of potholes there…

With any business start-up, there is the lingering question of “if you build it, will they come?” And even if they do, will it mean anything? But that is not the worry with developers, investors or users of SeeClickFix, the phone app enabling citizen engagement in pothole abatement. Citizens are coming, local governments are responding – and the potholes are getting fixed. The surprise is that all these volunteer pothole…

Massachusetts Gov. Duval Patrick in Mass is proposing a major funding increase to fix streets and bridges – including and especially the potholes – in the aftermath of the winter of 2010-2011. Patrick is asking the state legislature to increase the pothole budget from $155 million to $210 million. Meanwhile, a citizens group joined with several state mayors to ask that the number be pushed up, closer to $300 million…

Pothole.info continues to be the go-to source of information on potholes and how they affect our lives. According to television news reporter Mark Albert on KSAX-TV in Minneapolis, “The website Pothole.info says, ‘drivers will spend $330 each year repairing your car from these hazards.’” That was the bad news. But there may be better news on the prairie horizon, says Albert. He notes that the potholes in the Twin Cities…

That pothole your car hit sometime in the past week: can you blame it on salt used this past winter? If you live in Los Angeles, where potholes-per-mile are among the highest in the nation, the answer clearly is no. Los Angeles does not use salt. Never has, and probably never will. When the roads ice up in Los Angeles County, it is so rare an event that the city…

The producers of the Colin McEnroe, specifically Patrick Skahill and a group he assembles featuring Captain John Holt and Chion Wolf, peppered the program that aired on March 7, 2011, “Potholes Are Unbearable,” with a couple of songs that pay a rhythm and bluesy tribute to that ubiquitous scourge of streets everywhere. This first is soloist Chion Wolf with her own ode to potholes: I’m drivin’ down Main Street Got…

It was only a matter of time: A pothole in Brockton, Massachusetts has its own Facebook page. What’s more, it has fans: More than 500 as of March 15 (we thought it appropriate to visit it on the Ides of March). Under “Basic Information,” the pothole with the Facebook identity of “Alger Street” describes itself in frank terms: I am one of the meanest, ugliest roads you've ever seen. I…