Our Senior Reporter, Russ Klettke, will be appearing on the Colin McEnroe Show on WNPR, Connecticut Public Radio. The show will air live on Monday, March 7th, at 1 PM EST. The topic will of course be potholes, and several other relevant guests will join the discussion. <\/p>
CPTV \/ WNPR Web Site: 
<a href="http:\/\/www.cpbn.org\/">http:\/\/www.cpbn.org\/<\/a><\/p>
Listen Live: 
<a href="http:\/\/www.cpbn.org\/listen-live">http:\/\/www.cpbn.org\/listen-live<\/a><\/p>

Pothole.info to appear on WNPR, Hartford, CT

In a city known more for grunge bands, coffee, rain and Nordstrom’s, there emerges a new phenomenon that has the citizenry buzzing.<\/p>
Yup, it’s potholes. All that rain – and this winter, a good dose of snow as well – has to go somewhere. Where there are cracks in the pavement, that includes in and under the asphalt, leading to a proliferation of potholes that required filling 91 percent more chuckholes in January 2011 than January of last year. Unbowed, the city launched a new pothole-repair tracking website to keep motorists informed on the progress.<\/p>
The problems with pothole-riddled pavement began earlier in December, when MyNorthwest.com reported the city was doubling the number of pothole repair crews, from two to four. The website reported on December 23 that city spokesperson Rick Sheridan place the blame on two factors: excess rain and aging infrastructure.<\/p>
<\/p>
Just two weeks later, the press and commentariat were abuzz with complaints on where the potholes were – and who was to blame. Crosscut.com reported, “One thing is clear: Seattle&#8217;s potholes are blooming.” The hyperlocal blog reported that the city’s Department of Transportation, SDOT, carries the Seattle Pothole Information center at <a href="http:\/\/www.seattle.gov\/transportation\/potholes\/">http:\/\/www.seattle.gov\/transportation\/potholes\/<\/a>, including a color-coded map and a weekly report on progress, broken down into five categories:<\/p>
<ul>
<li>Outstanding pothole requests<\/li>
<li>Pothole requests initiated<\/li>
<li>Pothole requests closed (those fixed, and those found to be duplicates)<\/li>
<li>Potholes repaired<\/li>
<\/ul>
The accompanying map breaks down specific potholes into four different categories: New requests, work in progress, potholes filled in the preceding 90 days and a 12-month history of pothole repairs.<\/p>
Given how many throw-and-go pothole repairs begin disintegrating a few weeks after being fixed, one imagines a lot of overlap between the recently fixed and the new request sites.<\/p>
Crosscut.com continues its report, noting that “[Mayor Mike] McGinn stated that there are nearly something like three-times more potholes this winter than last, mostly because of rain and snow and ice, according to Seattle Department of Transportation supervisors. The freeze-thaw cycle can play havoc with the streets, and Seattle is not the only Washington city seeing a bumper crop of potholes. Spokane is dealing with an unprecedented proliferation as well.”<\/p>
Despite that last sentence, noting that potholes are subject to regional weather and other influences, the blog notes that all Seattle mayors, current and former, are implicated in pothole-ribbed city streets.<\/p>
“Potholes are how Seattleites judge effectiveness,” said Knute Berger, Crosscut reporter. “Can the mayor fix &#8217;em? [Former mayor] Greg Nickel&#8217;s launched the war with his “Pothole Rangers” and personally donned a helmet and went on patrol. [Another former mayor] Paul Schell reputedly made political points by becoming a pothole-repair vigilante. A mayor who can’t smooth the streets is in trouble. And it’s not just about cars: potholes can injure pedestrians and cyclists too.”<\/p>
Which are big concepts, as SDOT reports that 36 percent of the city’s half-million residents engage in recreational bicycling, and 8,000 people commute to their jobs there during the summer. Seattle has an equally pedestrian-friendly culture and infrastructure.<\/p>
The Seattle Times, a daily newspaper, opened a January 5 article with the line, “WELCOME to Seattle, City of Potholes.” It too took to task mayors, current and former, for their attempts to hold back the growing pothole problem.<\/p>
“[Former mayor Mike] McGinn launched a supposedly more thorough plan for dealing with potholes,” said Steve Ringman, reporting for the Times. “The new mayor all but scoffed at former Mayor Greg Nickels&#8217; rapid, 48-hour response, saying quick fixes were fast but not durable enough. Crews intend to take more time to remove jagged edges and create a smoother surface to last 12 months, compared with Nickels&#8217; three-month patches.”<\/p>
Blogger “Math Mom” weighed in her response to the Times’ article, noting how she hears repairs apparently are or should be done. “Apparently, Shoreline [a suburb immediate adjacent to Seattle] fixes cracks in the road before the ice and thaws happen,” she notes. “Gosh–no place for the ice to form in the roads leads to fewer potholes? Who could ever have predicted that not waiting for potholes to form in the first place before maintaining the streets might be a good idea? Amazing!”<\/p>
OK, perhaps Math Mom has the right idea. But in the mayor’s defense, there’s a lot more to running a city – police and fire departments, departments of revenue, education, cultural affairs, commerce, etc. – than just repairing potholes.<\/p>
Almanac.com (the Old Farmer’s Almanac, online) is predicting that the coldest and snowiest weather for the Pacific Northwest will ease in March, and that April and May will be “cooler and drier than normal.” Count the dryness as a plus – most pothole filling material (with some exceptions) cannot be used in standing puddles.<\/p>
Because where it comes to judging elected officials, mayors in particular, it’s the potholes people notice the most. As they accumulate and grow with aging roadway systems most cities built in the 1950s and 1960s, potholes increasingly have become the measure of mayoral effectiveness. We sympathize with all city leaders who grapple with this challenge – and wish them well in the spring and summer of 2011, when the repair work will happen in earnest.<\/p>

Seattle Grapples with Pothole Paloozza 2011

The election of Rahm Emanuel to the mayor's office in Chicago without a runoff – he garnered 55 percent of the vote in the February election, enough to save voters and the city the hassle and expense of a runoff election – is regarded as a minor miracle in this most political of cities. And that's a good thing, because the cash-strapped metropolis, like so many others, can use the money for other things. Not the least of which is repairs to the Windy City's infrastructure – including the potholes.
But my own Chicago miracle came a few weeks earlier, and it had everything to do a pothole. Specifically, a big, gaping, Volkswagen-jarring pothole on the Foster Street rise on Lake Shore Drive. I hit it twice, two days in a row, as I headed toward downtown in the southbound side of the famous parkway. So after the second hit, I did what I heard we could do: I called the non-emergency 3-1-1 city services line.

I half expected I would end up blogging about the series of fruitless phone calls I would make about that darn pothole. Chicago is a city of aldermanic wards, where seeking help with a municipal problem is thought to require knowing your alderman or alderwoman. But I didn't go that route. I just went through the standard, know-nobody system. Surely, I thought, the 3-1-1 program is just public relations, a bureaucratic black hole that goes deeper than any pothole anywhere on The Drive, the Kennedy, the Eisenhower, the Stevenson or any of the presidents' streets (Washington, Madison, Monroe, Adams, Jackson, Van Buren, etc.).
Instead, I was pleasantly surprised. The City of Chicago fixed this pothole in less than 24 hours. The night after I phoned it in, I drove slow enough over that rise and in the lane to the immediate right side of the pothole. In place of a jagged crevice in the road, that chuckhole (what potholes are sometimes called), had a smooth, blacker-than-the-rest-of-the-road face. Chicago Streets & Sanitation workers really outdid themselves on this. It was a pothole no more.
What it takes to get a pothole fixed in Chicago
Perhaps it was due to the fact that Lake Shore Drive is a major thoroughfare. The parkway's Main Branch Chicago Bridge handles 112,000 cars every day – commercial vehicles prohibited, it should be noted – and this particular section connects the near-North Shore suburbs of the city (Evanston, Wilmette, Winnetka and others) to downtown. Several miles of this part of Lake Shore Drive was a virtual battlefield of potholes in the winter of 2008-2009, after which a major pavement preservation program restored it to cruising beauty the following summer (summoning the old pothole-related joke about there only being two seasons in Chicago: winter and construction).
In fact, there are thousands of potholes in the city, like any other city, that need filling. At mid-February, just two weeks after the Groundhog's Day Blizzard of 2011, various media outlets reported on the condition of Chicago-area roads:
<ul>
<li>Although winter's worst might be behind us, stretches of roadway are still causing problems for drivers as they swerve around the potholes popping up across the city and suburbs. And in many cases, melting ice and snow are the culprit. "We welcome the spring," Chicago Department of Transportation Commissioner Bobby Ware said Tuesday. "But we also welcome our pothole temperatures." (Chicago Tribune, February 15, 2011)</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Drive with care. Pothole season is here. Due to the melting snow during the day and freezing temperatures at night, potholes are starting to pop up on the Chicago area's streets. The City of Chicago received 400 reports on Monday of potholes. "The good news is it's not as bad as a couple of winters ago," said Brian Steele, of the city's Department of Transportation. "Since December 1st, we're only at about 84,000 potholes." (WGN-TV, February 15, 2011)</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The warm-up around Chicagoland is definitely welcome, but one thing that comes with it isn't: potholes. City officials expect the number of pothole reports to spike this week. They said at a press conference Tuesday morning that there were 400 calls to 311 Monday and warned the worst is still ahead. The warm-up will provide the thaw part of the pothole cycle, and we've been in the deep freeze a long time now. The expanding and contracting asphalt, along with the rumble of traffic will stress many areas on Chicago's streets, will cause the cracks Chicagoans despise. (Fox News Chicago Reporter Joanie Lum, February 15, 2011)</li>
</ul>
Almost every news report urges Chicago residents to report their pothole-peeves to the city through the <a href="http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/cdot/provdrs/street/svcs/report_a_pot_holeinstreet.html">3-1-1 system</a>. When contacting them, be sure to provide as much detail on the location of the pothole (address or section of road, which lanes, and approximate size of the pothole or potholes).
The phone-in system is pretty easy – one call does it all if you can adequately describe the location of the pothole and its approximate size. The online system is relatively easy too, asking for that much information as well as who you are, where you live and how you can be contacted. Once you file the online report, you receive a confirmation e-mail that includes a tracking number and a link to a status query page. To follow up on progress, you can phone back to the 3-1-1 system with the tracking number to find out the status of the order.
All great cities are about great pavement
That early February snowstorm might have spelled political disaster under different circumstances. Former Mayor Jane Byrne won her seat in 1979 after the incumbent, Michael Bilandic, was widely blamed for botching the cleanup after another early-February snowstorm that dumped 35 inches on the streets of Chicago that year, Lake Shore Drive included. Byrne was saddled with pothole repairs in the aftermath – literally and metaphorically speaking – which stretched into the full four years of her term before she was bounced from office by Harold Washington in 1983. But in 2011, long-time Mayor Richard M. Daley was retiring and no candidate was so strongly attached to him that the snow cleanup – which went relatively well, except for an overnight 700-car logjam on the northbound lanes of Lake Shore Drive – influenced the election.
And so go the political fortunes of Chicago's mayors. The Chicago Tribune opined in January upon what is to come for the new mayor when he or she took office later in the spring. Rethinking the city's aldermanic-ward system – which in the case of my Lake Shore Drive pothole repair proved unimportant – is what the paper believes can help the city meet future infrastructure challenges.
Many aldermanic candidates seem determined to preserve Chicago's 50 fiefdoms as service delivery zones, regardless of cost. They're still wedded to the city's inefficient ward system for snow removal or garbage pickup, for example, despite the savings that would be realized by using a grid plan that ignores ward boundaries. They know residents are far more focused on potholes than pensions, and we get that, too. But something has to give — and that can't only mean the taxpayers.
I've seen a miracle with a pothole on Lake Shore Drive, so I know it is possible. Now let's see if the miracles can multiply themselves by a factor of about 300,000, the estimated number that need to be repaired in Chicago sometime in 2011.

Can One Chicago Pothole Miracle Be Repeated?

There are two ways to attack the pothole problem. One is to fix the potholes. The other is to drive a car that is tougher than any chuckhole that comes its way.
With current technology and resources, neither is 100% possible. Potholes are inevitable, even if there are smarter and better ways to build and maintain roads today. Come winter and spring, in almost every town in every climate, there will be potholes.

As for the cars, most don't hold up so well. The average American vehicle on the road sustains more than $400 per year in damages due to potholes. Those damages come in the form of blown, dented or broken tires and rims, shocks and struts, and suspension and steering components. Other car parts that suffer from the bumps and jumps of potholes: control arms, tie rods, sway bar and sway bar links, ball joints, idler arms, tie rods, axle shafts and wheel bearings. At the very least, wheel alignment is compromised by the repeated jarring effects of a pothole-ridden commute. In some cases, undercarriage components such as the exhaust system and lower engine damage can occur from something as simple as a 5-inch deep pothole.
Potholes can happen anywhere – and they do. Whenever a few dollars are not spent on fixing small pavement cracks, many more dollars need to be spent a year or two down the road on the huge, gaping potholes that result. Cheaper throw-and-go, temporary-fix asphalt is often used to fix potholes when higher-quality, cold-mix asphalt would work better over time.
Futuristic cars designed for potholes
Car designers and manufacturers are looking at the pothole problem with inventiveness. Maybe they know that with an aging infrastructure and strapped budgets, millions of miles of America's roadways are not being properly preserved. Perhaps they conclude that a portion of the car-buying public will choose to take matters into their own hands, purchasing cars that stand up better to those potholes.
There even is a car model that claims it is being designed to specifically withstand potholes. Still in the concept stage, Hyundai, the Korean automaker, unveiled its "Curb" model at the Detroit Auto Show in January 2011.
"Curb is about urban living," Phil Zak, the center's design chief, told The New York Times. He described the car as "a small crossover, an example of 'tough tech' and 'fluidic sculpture.'" It also is the carmaker's play for a younger, more hip and decidedly more urban market.
Jason Brown, another Hyundai designer, also told the Times, "We wanted the Curb to be urban tough without looking like a Brink's truck. City driving was going to be its forte, not crossing the Rubicon trail, but we wanted it to have urban armor for daily driving on city streets." Other features are retractable roof and bike racks, plus iPad-like controls on the interior for the car's complete sound and audio connectivity.
Sounds like pothole resilience to us. Hyundai claims Curb will be available as early as 2012.
But another breakthrough vehicle concept is the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuSdRLn2_y4 ">Google self-driving car</a>. It reportedly uses video cameras, radar sensors, laser range finds and electronic maps assembled through the collective data that is gathered by all such cars and fed into the search behemoth's massive data centers. The car would reportedly know or sense hazardous pavement, as its designers claim it has proven capable of doing over 140,000 miles of testing over many months.
There is no word yet as to who will actually manufacture and market the car. Many people are scratching their heads as to why a tech company would dip its toe into the water-filled pothole of a mature and often-troubled industry. The vague rationale revealed thus far is that with<a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/what-were-driving-at.html"> Google technology</a>, the industry and consumer experience would be transformed. It doesn't hurt that American automakers have returned to profitability, and that overall new vehicles sales of "light vehicle" (non-truck and SUV) sales will hit 76.5 million units in 2011.
And while there seems to be a lot of activity around futuristic concepts that withstand the age-old problem of potholes, it hardly is the first time that Detroit has approached building cars that can stand up to some pavement abuse. The first shock absorbers, made with leather springs, preceded the automobile in 19th century stagecoaches.
In a story reported by the Associated Press in 2005, engineer and entrepreneur Amar Bose was working on a very specific challenge in designing car shock absorber systems: how to create a cornering capability without creating a swerve-prone, bumpier ride. The report says that the now 81-year-old Bose, chairman of Framingham, Massachusetts-based Bose Corporation, spent more than 50 years trying to figure out why "potholes seem harder to conquer than Mount Everest."
Bose's breakthrough technology differs from mechanical spring-and-shock absorbers. Instead, his suspension system employs high-voltage electrical coils and magnets. The effect is to temper bumps from potholes as much as the rollover tendency around curves and corners in roads. The problem: It would add $5000 to the cost of any car. There haven't been any takers in the six years since the technology was revealed.
Preventive driving
So while the Curb, the Google Car and Bose suspension systems have yet to become available to even high-end, early-adopter motorists, there are steps that any driver can take with whatever they drive. Potholes are everywhere and so are cars. It is a reconciling of these two incontrovertible and inexorable forces.
The American Automobile Association Mid-Atlantic region has issued a warning to all motorists that, given the conditions created by winter weather in 2011, motorists need to observe certain precautions. According to the AAA director of Public and Government Affairs, "While many motorists' cars have made it through the winter storm season unscathed, they could still fall victim to a pothole left in its aftermath. Potholes are not only vexing and nerve-rattling to motorists, they are also a significant threat to the safety of motorists, bicyclists and pedestrians. Hitting a pothole can cause drivers to lose control of their vehicles, possibly resulting in a crash, and swerving to avoid a pothole can be just as dangerous."
The association's press release notes, "Potholes and the resulting pockmark of quick fix patches are a more obvious hazard on roads that have not been recently resurfaced or had basic maintenance due to a lack of transportation funding." Given those conditions, they recommend taking several precautions:
<div class="indent">
Tire inspections – Tread wear and inflation are very important because better tires mean a better cushion between the car and the pothole (to test yours, insert an American quarter into a tread groove; if the rubber fails to cover part of George Washington's head, your tread is worn).
Check the suspension – Excessive vibration, vehicle handling problems and uneven wear on tire treads are clues to problematic shocks and struts. With poor suspension to begin with, the damage from a pothole to the undercarriage can be even more significant.
Eagle-eye driving – Always look for potholes ahead. In traffic, this is not possible if you follow too closely on the heels of the car in front of you. And if you swerve, be sure it isn't into traffic in adjacent lanes.
Reduce speed – This is basic physics: speed x mass + pothole = damage. At a slower speed, you are more likely to be able to react in time to avoid the pothole altogether.
Don't trust puddles – A puddle might be 1/4–inch deep or six inches deep. Regard all with fear, loathing and avoidance.
Inspect vehicle alignment – General safety calls for good alignment, which is often the first thing to go with a hard pothole hit.
Pay attention to noises and vibrations – Another indicator of pothole damage is unusual sounds and vibration. It's a call to have your car inspected for dislodged wheel weights, damaged tires or broken suspension components, with the likely culprit being – you guessed it ­– a pothole.
</div>
In other words, the best technology right now sits between your own ears. Drive safely, protect yourself and your passengers as much as you would your car. And keep an eye out for some exciting new vehicles and suspension systems … a few years down the road (a road which, in all likelihood, will be riddled with potholes).

Carmakers to Potholes: Bring It On

The New York City Department of Transportation and motorists on Staten Island, New York experienced last fall what has become a common problem in an increasingly wired world: A utility cut was made to a recently repaved stretch of road. The cut was filled with temporary-patch asphalt, but it was deteriorating rapidly just weeks later – and drivers were not happy.
This has happened countless times in recent years, as businesses and residential areas demand greater access to broadband cable. DOTs and utility companies try to coordinate schedules to the effect that paving is done last, after the various utility lines are laid. But it doesn’t always work out that way. Paving and utility companies work on separate timetables for unrelated reasons.

But as a utility company in the Cayman Islands and its cable-installation contractor proved recently, there’s a smart way to work around this problem. It’s called micro trenching, which involves a narrow, almost imperceptible slit cut into the pavement to accommodate thin cables. It enables quick installation of the cable with minimal damage to the pavement.
Two innovations have enabled this streamlined approach to utility cable installation, which involves a cut less than an inch wide for a 12-inch-deep channel.
One technological advancement is with the cable itself, a “micro conduit” that has up to seven channels for seven wires, vertically stacked on top of each other instead of a rounder, fatter bundling as is found in traditional cable.
The second innovation is how the trench itself is cut. An air-cooled saw cuts the narrow trench to a width just wide enough to accommodate the stacked-up cable. To do this, an advanced blade manufacturing process provides a narrower blade that is just as strong as thicker blades. Traditional pavement cutters are cooled by water, which is a messy process that takes up more time in the clean up phase.
Less traffic disruption during and after under-pavement cable installation
Micro trenching might radically change this difficult marriage between utilities and pavement for the better. It’s faster, so there is less time spent holding up vehicular traffic on the roads where it is being used. While a relatively new process without a lot of experience on which to base a cost-analysis, it appears to be a less expensive process than with the four-inches-to-six-foot wide cuts that plague fast-moving vehicles. The pothole-like shocks to cars traveling over utility cuts are eliminated, as are the opportunities for new potholes to form.
One such micro trench was installed by Slimlines Trenching Ltd. in the Cayman Islands. The contractor was working for Logic, a voice-Internet-cable TV utility on the islands.
Richard Corbin, managing director for Slimlines Trenching, shared with us how the micro trenches were dug, why they are possible – and how these road cuts were later filled to avoid pavement deterioration and pothole formation further down the line.
<div class="indent">
Pothole.info: What are the dimensions – width and depth – that make up the micro trenches?
Corbin: We are currently cutting a .75" x 12" deep trench in the center of our capital and business district of George Town, Grand Cayman and have also cut .95" x 12" in some areas as well for the installation of two conduits which are placed side by side for increased capacity as required.
Pothole.info: I read that microtrenching about eight years ago was problematic, in part because the trenches weren’t as deep. What is new today that enables micro trenching to be workable?
Corbin: Advances in equipment and conduit manufacturing processes have enabled equipment manufactures the ability to scale down the size of the equipment and trenching attachments required. Advances in the blade manufacturing process enabled blades to be narrower while maintaining their strength, along with the use of high volume vacuum systems allowing the blades to be air cooled, therefore extending the life of the blade while eliminating the need for water cooling and the messy clean up and residue associated with the same.
Another improvement is the availability of micro-conduit, which is narrow and vertically rigid, along with advances in fiber technology, which have reduced the overall size of fiber. Is it about flat cables versus round? In our case it is more so about the conduit, with the conduit being narrow, flat and vertically rigid. It was perfectly suited for our customer’s needs.
Pothole.info: From a construction costs perspective, does the method compare favorably to traditional trench cuts?
Corbin: It is hard to say with certainty, but based on our experience and the feedback we are receiving it seems to compare favorably (this is the first trenching project we have been involved in – [there are many] variations in conditions and requirements involved in trenching). Micro-trenching has a considerably lower impact on the environment and is neighbor friendly, with minimal disruptions to vehicular and pedestrian traffic due to the reduced size of the required work zone. In some cases it requires only half a lane to be closed; reinstatement is completed simultaneously with the lane being reopened to traffic immediately following the reinstatement, which in most cases is a matter of two to three hours.
Pothole.info: You used cold mix asphalt for sealing. Is this a material you have worked with in the past?
Corbin: As mentioned above, this is the first microtrenching project we have been involved in. Therefore it is also the first time we used asphalt for reinstatement. However, based on our research the <a href="http://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/video/micro-trenching-features-ez-street.php">EZ Street cold patch was the product best suited to micro trenching</a> and available for our needs and conditions (relating to the reinstatement of the narrow trench while satisfying the requirements of our local National Roads Authority).
Pothole.info: How was it to work with and did you find it preferable over a hot mix?
Corbin: We found the product consistent and easy to work with from the manageable 35-pound bag size. It almost creeps into the trench by itself, as it has a pliable nature and is easy to cleanup.
Pothole.info: Do the costs and performance features of microtrenching suggest easier, less expensive installation of cabling overall, that it might extend broadband and other services further and faster?
Corbin: Overall the micro-trenching process seems to be faster resulting in realized time savings. When delivering new services it can mean the difference between being first to market and third or fourth.
</div>
While there can be many factors that lead to roadway congestion and gridlock, construction-related projects is one of the major contributors to traffic tie-ups. As Slimlines Trenching illustrates, cutting down those times and spaces where lanes need to be blocked can reduce motorist inconvenience – and costs.
In a study conducted ten years ago, the Texas Transportation Institute determined that in the 75 largest metropolitan areas of the U.S., delays wasted $67.5 billion in lost worker productivity and 5.7 billion gallons of gasoline (21.6 billion liters) during 3.6 billion vehicle-hours of delays each year. Costs to individual drivers in such delays range from $200 per year in smaller cities to $1000 in more populous metro areas.
In other words, what’s good for reducing costs to utilities for cable installation is also good for municipalities and states that are responsible for pavement quality and pothole prevention. Motorists benefit in reduced traffic tie-ups during the construction, lower costs for car repair from pothole and utility cut damage to tires and axels – and, those motorists may get better and less expensive utility service, too.
Our bet is that there are residents of Staten Island in New York who would wholly support use of micro trenching in future cable installations.

An End to the Utility-Cut Bump? Micro Trenching Emerges as Kind to Pavement, Motorists

In the business of potholes, when the weather is coldest is actually when things really heat up.
We are talking heated emotions over damages to vehicles from potholes. And heated pressure on road crews and politicians. Sometimes, a hot asphalt mix is used to repair the potholes found in highways to fix them. But in the coldest environs, a temporary cold patch mix is more often used for pothole repair. Unfortunately, temporary cold patch mix often needs to be refilled just a week or two later.
"The problem with the cold patch material, it is a temporary fix," said Doug Fischer, Anoka County (Minnesota) Highways Engineer, to a local newspaper. "On a high volume road, that may only last a couple of days. It seems like a pothole never gets fixed. [But] it gets fixed five or ten times."

Note that there are high- and low-quality cold patch. The latter is most often used, but the former lasts longer. The sense that lower-priced material costs less might be an illusion if labor costs for multiple repairs are not factored in. Almost universally, in the U.S. and other countries, road maintenance budgets are strapped and inadequate for the needs as presented.
But it's not just the traditionally cold places during the Winter of 2011 that are experiencing potholes. Oh sure, in Toronto, Buffalo, Chicago, Minneapolis and all of North Dakota, state and local highway departments are battling rough pavement as each gets pelted with snow. But rains up and down the West Coast, including Southern California, plus frigid temperatures they are calling the Big Freeze in the U.K., all add up to the same thing: deterioration of pavement into what is universally called a pothole.
The Upper Midwest Potholes: Costly to Taxpayers, Costly to Industry
Fans of the movie "Fargo" might not be blamed for knowing this, but the state of North Dakota is a bit of an economic powerhouse. It has a $24 billion economy overall, and leads the U.S. in production of barley, durum wheat, spring wheat, sunflower seeds and farm-raised turkeys. Food processing companies make use of some of this product, while other raw goods are shipped out of state for processing. But energy is a big part of the economy also, with a known 3-4 billion barrels of untapped oil in the Bakken formation, even while the state is beginning to exploit large expanses of windswept plains in what is called "the Saudi Arabia of wind energy."
Agriculture and petroleum require roads. Building windmills requires roads. And as of this winter, the North Dakota roads are in trouble.
"We are growing and moving more crops than ever before and that is having a major impact on our already stressed rural road network," North Dakota Agriculture Commissioner Goehring told PrairieBizMag.com. "Yet funding in real dollars for county and local roads has grown only modestly in recent years, while construction costs have soared." He is reflecting on a study that says funding for rural roads is essential for the state's economy.
But North Dakota, along with South Dakota and Minnesota are de-paving some roads altogether, turning them back to gravel. "Most of those guys (farmers) are tired of dodging the potholes," said Richland County (North Dakota) Engineer Tim Schulte to the Wahpeton Daily News. "They're probably not even using the road because it's in such poor condition, where if we got it to at least a gravel road they'd probably start using it again. Most people don't want to lose the pavement, but realize that there's really no other alternative."
Counties and the state highway departments are trying to judiciously maintain the roads that are most necessary. But with a reorganization of where grain elevators are located – farther away than before, due to consolidation and changing technologies – and a reduction in railway lines, grain is being moved by semi-trucks instead of single tandem axle trucks. It all adds up to heavier truck usage, more wear and tear on roads, potholes – and greater pressure to maintain those roads. The winter of 2011 has not made this situation any better.
Elsewhere in the Midwest, the winter is taking no prisoners.
In Minnesota, MnDOT took advantage of a warm spell just before New Years to patch up some potholes before the New Years weekend. But as anyone as smart as a sixth grader knows, freeze thaw cycles like that are what make the problem worse. A private contractor told Fox News Twin Cities that they expect Minnesota's largest metropolitan area will have potholes "far worse than last year."
Such pothole problems are not confined to the Upper Midwest. In Cincinnati, WLWT-TV reports that city crews are stretched between snow plowing and pothole repairs. A storm on January 11 sent many drivers to tire and wheel repair shops, and as one shop owner told television reporters, "The worst is yet to come, especially after this last storm we had. [The potholes are] building up." Situated at the convergence of three states – Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky – area residences are asked to report potholes via hotline numbers to the respective state authorities.
Things got so bad with one street in Mason City, Iowa that city engineers had two blocks of streets paved temporarily in gravel. They hoped continuous freezing temperatures would keep those streets solid – waiting for spring to repave them – but warm spells were uncooperative. Potholes in the gravel have formed as well, which them temporarily fill with more gravel.
The Chicago suburb of Naperville, Illinois already saw freeze-thaw cycles by early January. "And when we get that," said Will County Engineer Bruce Gould to Naperville Patch, a community news website, "roads just start popping. The more we get, the worse the road system gets. And of course, the salt doesn't help any because we put salt on the road and that draws the moisture."
The temperature fluctuation between Christmas and New Years affected the roads around Lafayette, Indiana as well. INDOT spokesperson Debbie Calder told the Journal & Courier/JCOnline.com that crews are using a technique known as "total patching." This involves clearing loose pothole debris, spraying the inside of the hole with hot oil and filling it with patching material. The patch is temporary and can disintegrate with the next snowfall, but is intended to last just long enough for permanent repairs in the spring and summer.
Both ends of New York, plus California 
A bit further east, in Buffalo, the winter falls somewhere in the "average" category, which of course means lots of snow. This so far included a few storms that qualified for national media attention. The one that got the most coverage was simply a narrow band of lake (Erie) effect snow, but it tied up the western section of the New York State Thruway for 24 hours, consequently a line up of several miles of vehicles didn't move for a full day. Meanwhile, the NBC-TV affiliate, WGRZ-TV, reports "It is hard to go down any city street without noticing a depression, divot, or pothole…which this time of year seem to sprout like dandelions on a lawn in May." They make it almost sound pretty.
Buffalo Commissioner of Public Works Steve Stepniak says the city depends on citizens to report potholes. "We need those things to be called in," he told the television station. " If they call it in to 3-1-1 it helps us, because remember we're covering 1,600 lane miles within the city proper…and it's a great tool for our maintenance yard because it actually goes directly to them, so they can get out there and take a look."
Stepniak says the city provides a 48-hour turnaround between when a pothole is called in to the 3-1-1 system and when the hole gets filled.
New York City has had, of course, a couple of well-publicized storms. Snow removal is what has consumed the public's attention. But the experienced New York Department of Transportation (NYDOT) employee probably is keeping a watchful eye on the freeze-thaw cycles and how potholes can render Broadway, Madison Avenue or Central Park West veritable obstacle courses. And it will take a miracle on 34th Street to get them all repaired by spring.
A little north and a little west in Toronto, they keep accurate counts on how many potholes are filled annually. The counts going back three years: 277,000 potholes filled in 2008, followed by 253,409 potholes in 2009 and 179,462 potholes in 2010. The drop last year was due to milder weather and road resurfacing projects the previous year, but harsher weather that began in December 2010 portends more potholes in 2011.
But the Canadians are probably better off than their Commonwealth sisters in the U.K. Exceptionally cold temperatures there in December and early January are being collectively referred to as the Big Freeze. Places such as Cumbria are riddled with potholes, while the AA (the British automobile association) are seeing car insurance claims related to pothole damage costing as much as 1300 pounds sterling. Reportedly, this and last winter were particularly brutal on the roadways due to heavy freezes.
Back on the U.S. side of the pond, California cities including Los Angeles, San Bernadino and Long Beach have their hands full of damage from the torrential rains of December and January. This brings home the idea that it isn't simply freeze-thaw cycles that undermine the integrity of pavement. In fact, it is always moisture – which California has had in spades. According to the U.S. Weather Service, December was the wettest year on record in Southern California. It gets into cracks, it erodes the sub-pavement and heavy traffic then crumbles the unsupported top layer forming potholes.
While California is thought to be the trendsetter in many ways, it's the Motor City that introduced some new, big ideas on dealing with potholes. At the 2011 Detroit Auto Show in mid-January, automaker Hyundai introduced the Curb, a concept car that bills itself an "Urban Activity Vehicle," which its designers said would be "at home in an urban environment with potholes and densely packed nightclubs on the streets."
It's not too often you hear potholes and nightclubs lumped together in the same context. But with the weather and aftermath of winter in full flower (as they might say in Buffalo), leaving potholes in its wake from sea to shining sea, maybe the idea of making your way through potholes while spending a night out on the town might just be what people need during the cold season of broken pavement.

Pothole Cratered Highways, Coast to Coast Potholes and Beyond

Car insurance rates are typically set according to drivers' ages, occupations, credit scores, home ownership and levels of education, in addition to moving traffic violations and accident records.
It has never been practical to observe how exactly a driver would, say, handle an open stretch of road at 3 a.m. Or for that matter, how he or she might negotiate a pothole-ridden boulevard in rush hour.
Not until now, anyway. Insurance companies are beginning to offer a different option to drivers, applying wireless technology which records and rewards them for how they actually drive on a day-to-day basis. Industry experts predict it to be a wave of the future in auto insurance, while others see it has potential to cut auto emissions with reduced driving overall.

Progressive.com, the national U.S. auto insurer well known for it's "Flo" commercials, began to roll out a car tracking device option for customers in 2010 and is expanding the offering in 2011. Called the Snapshot Discount, drivers who choose to participate in the voluntary program receive a sensor device, which plugs into onboard diagnostic ports (which are found in most autos manufactured since 1996). The wireless device transmits signals to Progressive computers, recording miles driven, the time of day the car was driven, speeds traveled and how the driver applies brakes and the accelerator. The sensor does not have a GPS function, therefore the company is not actually monitoring where motorists go.
Progressive began testing the devices as early as 2008 and has since rolled out the program to 17 states (as of early January 2011). Those states are Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Ohio, Oregon, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin.
The Progressive Snapshot program provides an evaluation after 30 days' use of the device, informing the driver if he or she is eligible for a discount on the current insurance rate. The reduction is worth up to a 30 percent or less or none at all, depending on the findings. Safer drivers who are on the road at times of day when there are fewer accidents are more likely to receive discounts. The driver continues using the device for five more months, after which the company determines if the driving behavior was consistent and if the driver can renew his or her policy at the discounted rate.
Drivers can monitor their driving in real time via the Progressive website. If a policyholder decides to opt out of the program, they can do so at any time (but in so doing forfeit any chance of receiving a discount).
Consumers and air quality benefit
While privacy advocates suggest this is one more example of Big Brother – which is difficult to get terribly upset about, given how mobile phones have been doing this for more than a decade – insurance industry spokespeople herald it as a reward to safer drivers.
The Insurance Institute of Highway Safety (IIHS) conducted a study in 2009 on teen drivers who were being monitored by a similar device. The study focused on newly-licensed drivers, able to operate a vehicle without the presence of parents in the car but with the device telling mom and dad the speeds at which the new driver traveled, if the operator of the vehicle was wearing a seat belt and whether there was rapid acceleration or braking. Overall, study participants with devices drove more safely than those without. Study author Anne McCartt from IIHS commented, "teens did take fewer risks when they were being monitored."
Adults were not included in the study, but if the incentive is to save money there is good indication it will have a similar effect. The Brookings Institute, an independent, research-based think tank, conducted a study that found when drivers pay insurance based on miles driven, the actual miles driven would drop by 13.5 percent in New Jersey and 8 percent nationwide.
There might even be an added benefit to the environment. The Brookings Institute study also determined that carbon emissions would consequently be reduced by 2 percent. Mike Replogle of the Environmental Defense Fund told NJ.com, "Going easy on the pedal and easy on the brakes not only helps safety, but also the environment."
Prognosis: Likely to expand
"This is definitely the wave of the future," Loretta Worter, vice president of the Insurance Information Institute told NJ.com when the program was first offered to 127,000 Progressive.com customers in New Jersey. "More and more companies are getting on board with tracking devices, seeing they offer a lot of advantages to consumers."
While the Progressive.com device tracks the car's speed, the location is not recorded, therefore the company claims it has no intention to report above-the-limit speeds to authorities. However, recording the time someone drives as a positive or negative might unfairly hit certain drivers whose work schedules are unorthodox. A spokesperson for the Consumer Federation of America, which says the system is better for fair pricing, worries that it could negatively affect graveyard shift workers by imposing higher rates on them.
When contacted, a company spokesperson for Progressive.com said there was no way to record swerving or slowing specifically to avoid potholes. [Note to the research department: Work on that, because vehicle damages from potholes can sometimes cost more than $1000.]
It remains to be seen if these tracking devices will effectively cause better driving behaviors over the long haul, and if more insurance companies will offer such policies. Other questions waiting to be answered: Will this lead to more equitable pricing in insurance as well as lower accident rates? And will more careful driving mean fewer pothole hits for cars?
If Progressive.com's Flo is talking about this a year or two from now, we can safely assume the program is successful – and will become a standard feature in the auto insurance industry.

Car Insurance Tracking Devices: Setting Rates According to How You Drive

Chicago's most trusted meteorologist, Tom Skilling, dares to guide the 8 million people in the greater Chicago metro area through some of the country's most harsh and unpredictable weather. From his perch as chief weathercaster on WGN-TV and the Chicago Tribune, he is the point of first consult every morning for those who plan to venture outside – spring, summer and fall, but most especially, in winter. The frigid season of 2010-2011 is expected to be no different.
And while the nature of what he does is based on winds and moisture and pressure systems miles above the earth's surface, his focus of course is on how it affect people on the ground. That includes the ground itself – and road pavement – as in how potholes form and affect traffic.

In a particularly chilly stretch of several weeks in January 2009, it was Skilling who reported that longtime mayor Richard Daley was admitting the degree of pothole damage to the city's streets had become unmanageable.
"City Hall's 21 pothole repair crews have been dispatched across the city, filling an average of 3,700 potholes a day over the first eight days of the year," he wrote. "But Daley said hundreds of new reports come in each day and thousands of potholes remain unplugged. 'When snow and ice are packed in the street, it's nearly impossible for crew to make any pothole repairs,' the mayor said. 'It is difficult to work with cold patch material in sub-zero temperatures. It pops up … It's frozen when you put it down.'"
The mayor, and Skilling's reporting, touched on a common problem with mid-winter pothole repairs. But neither made the distinction between lower-quality asphalt material and premium cold asphalt. Just north of the city, in Evanston Township, the streets department was working with a different kind of high-performance cold asphalt (EZ Street brand). <a href="http://www.youtube.com/ezstreetasphalt#p/c/7C945986DDB93C91/0/3igqoRWCUrw">This clip</a> shows both when the repairs were made during that same cold stretch in January 2009, as well as 10 months later, after the patch had been through spring, summer and fall.
Unlike Mayor Daley's lament about pothole patches that pop up, it bears noting that Evanston streets foreman Don Cornelius said, "It held up real well, it didn't push out in the summertime."
Chicago is predicted to get a colder than normal winter, with very cold periods in December, late January and mid-February 2011. Precipitation (snowfall) will also be near or slightly above normal, with a snowstorm predicted for the latter part of January. In the 120-year history of weather record keeping, Chicago has had 19 days of snowfall totaling more than 10 inches, including an 18.6 inch snowfall on January 2, 1999, which was part of a three-day storm bringing in 21.6 inches overall. In terms of annual snowfall accumulation, the 2009-2010 winter had a relatively large total of 54.3 inches. The winter of 2008-2009 was close behind with 52.7 inches, but both were eclipsed by the 60.3 inches that fell in 2007-2008. Compare those to a string of mild winters in the late 1980s through the mid 1990s, which included the 1988-1989 winter's mere 24.5 inches of accumulation.
Potholes meet their match
To hardy Midwesterners, the past isn't prologue. Every winter is different. But inevitably, the true cost after the sidewalks and driveways are shoveled and the roads are plowed, comes in damages to cars as a result of potholes.
It's an old story with a thousand chapters. The trail leading to auto repair shops (pothole hits can blow out tires, damage wheel rims, break axles and can cause a car to crack its catalytic converter) can start below the earth, as it did in north suburban Lake County in January 2010. A water main break under Route 43, a state road, caused existing pavement to heave up. This would surely be a traffic-stopper if left untended. So as detailed in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/ezstreetasphalt#p/c/7C945986DDB93C91/3/sCZjhwi5mkk">this clip</a>, crews dug down more than 12 inches to prep for a permanent fix using <a href="http://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/products/">EZ Street premium cold asphalt</a>, done in four "lifts" (layers, separately laid and compacted).
That was on a balmy 30-degree winter day. Just a week later in another Chicago suburb, Westmont, the temperatures were 5 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit) – the kind of temperature dip that keeps weathercaster Tom Skilling busy, and which inevitably leads to freeze-thaw cycles and road damage that results in potholes. It was just another day when a utility cut needed to be repaired, so crews in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/ezstreetasphalt#p/c/7C945986DDB93C91/2/j4yStw3whUA">this video</a> demonstrated how the cold mix product was still pliable in arctic conditions.
The winter of 2009-2010 in the Chicago area was relatively mild, pothole-wise. The Chicago Tribune reported in April, the moment between potholes and road construction and repair season, that the 225,000 potholes patched that year was a "substantial drop from previous winters." The preceding winter (2008-2009) saw more than 350,000 potholes repaired, while 450,000 potholes were patched in the winter before that (2007-2008), according to the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT).
Why the diminishing numbers? CDOT says it was due to combination of factors, primarily fewer freeze-thaw cycles (i.e., more consistent stretches of freezing temperatures) and that 31 miles of city arterial streets had been resurfaced from the 2009 federal economic stimulus package.
"Last winter, we were filling tens of thousands of potholes on the pothole-plagued streets, and we were out to those locations [where streets have since been resurfaced] several times,' said CDOT's Brian Steele to the Chicago Tribune. "This time, we've not been out there once." Steele says their crews work seven days a week during the height of the season, even though complaints were down last winter. But he knows the law of atrophy applies to pavement as much as pyramids and people. There will be more potholes developing in Chicago – and the department wants to be informed.
"Please report a pothole when you see it," Steele says. "There are more than 3,800 miles of streets in Chicago, and potholes can occur on any of the streets. And we depend on the eyes and ears of the citizens to help us find the locations."
Chicago is a little behind the curve on pothole reporting. The city's 3-1-1 non-emergency hotline is the primary place to call in a pothole complaint. But that requires the reporting citizen to remember to make the call, accurately describe a location, and for the human being at the 311 center to gather that information and send it to appropriate CDOT officials for attention. Multiply that times tens of thousands, and it's understandable if there are some mistakes made in reporting. In other cities – Boston, Portland (Oregon), Charlotte (North Carolina) and Los Angeles, to name a few – citizen smartphone apps are now streamlining that process considerably. The individual needs only to point, shoot and send, providing a visual as well as GPS pinpoint location – eliminating the opportunity for human error in the process.
Who pays when potholes inflict damage?
For motorists whose cars are damaged by a pothole, the city will compensate, on valid claims, for half of the repair cost, up to $2000. City Council member Donal Quinlan told the Chicago Tribune, "The logic is the driver may have had some chance to avoid the damage." Claim forms can be obtained through the <a href="http://www.chicityclerk.com/claims.php">city clerk's office</a>. 
But some claims fall into no-man's-land sometimes. When there is a dispute on a claim, it might be about which government body is responsible – the city, county or state. Driver Sharon Brennan found out about that the hard way in the nearby suburb of Winnetka. She had sustained a blown tire, which ended up costing $147.66 to repair. The village of Winnetka refused to cover any costs because the road on which she was driving (Green Bay Road) is under the jurisdiction of the state of Illinois. But efforts to collect the damages from the state were unsuccessful as well. "Green Bay Road is under the jurisdiction of the state of Illinois, but all surface maintenance is the responsibility of the village, and any associated liability is the responsibility of the village," said Illinois Department of Transportation spokesperson Josh Kauffman in an interview with the Chicago Tribune.
When Brennan went back to the village to refile her claim with that information, the village refused her request for $147.66, saying there had been no report of the pothole to them prior to her mishap. Winnetka, population 12,419, has a median household income of $277,371 and a median home value of $1.5 million.
The nearby city of Rockford, Illinois has a population of 150,000 people and surprisingly far fewer claims of pothole damage on its streets. In 2009, the municipality only paid out on 15 pothole-damage claims for a total of $5,792.36.
Why so few claims and such a small payout? Most residents were, until recently, unaware they could collect anything at all. But the standard for a successful claim is high, as it is in many cities (including Chicago). The pothole that caused your damage necessarily needs to have been reported prior to your accident and gone unrepaired by city work crews.
But the city's legal director, Patrick Hayes, also says that minimal road maintenance prior to 2007 simply has led to more potholes than in previous years. But a new infrastructure sales tax in the past two years has raised more funds to catch up a bit on repairs. But make no mistake – Rockford has its share of potholes. And the bureaucratic costs are not limited to those payouts. From the city's risk management budget, an estimated $216,000 was paid out in 2009 to cover insurance, legal claims and judgments.
Since more people became aware they can make claims in Rockford, "it's been a tremendous work spike for our Public Works Department and Legal Department to deal with all of the claims," says Hayes.
Cities like Rockford, Chicago, Winnetka, Evanston and Westmont (as well as Oak Brook, Joliet, Springfield, Kankakee, Champaign-Urbana, Normal, Bloomington, Decatur and Naperville) should all benefit from a $100 million fund announced by Illinois Governor Pat Quinn in September. The funds are dedicated to helping cities and towns repave roads or otherwise repair potholes, as well as maintain bridges, install traffic signals, construct storm sewers and sidewalks and build bicycle paths.
The state has already invested $8 billion in federal and state dollars since 2009 in roads and bridges. It has been part of why pothole incidence is down. With an investment in pavement preservation, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure – and a few tons less of car repairs and damage claims.

Pothole repairs confound Illinois cities, counties

The most modern of innovations, smartphone apps, are rapidly becoming a means to fix one of humankind's oldest problems: potholes.
And why not? Regardless of whether you were a fan of Isaac Asimov or the television show "Bewitched," the futuristic/magical ability to point at a problem and fix it instantly (well, almost) is instinctively appealing. To do that, there are now several apps that combine the basic smart phone tools – cameras, the global positioning system (GPS) and a short-cut email function – which enable a single snap-send way to report a pothole (or graffiti or broken streetlights or other municipal problems).

The fact that several apps have been developed – some that are city-sponsored, others operating nationally by third parties who then patch the report through to local street and highway maintenance departments – suggests this is an idea and technology whose time has come.
This "civic app" is so new (most were introduced in the winter of 2009 –2010) that there is not a lot of data to show how effective it is. But we can learn a lot from what Portland, Oregon has done with its mobile app. There, citizens are connected directly to city services that repair streetlights, potholes, sewer catch basins, graffiti and park equipment. When the app was launched in February 2010, citizens in the tech-savvy city were quick to embrace it.
But Portland's maintenance crews were initially overwhelmed with reports on potholes that needed fixing. Your intrepid Pothole.info reporter contacted Rick Nixon, Project Manager for Technological Initiatives at the City of Portland to see what has happened since, particularly as they gear up for the 2010 – 2011 pothole season.
Pothole.info: We read about your successful launch in early 2010, followed by how street maintenance crews had a hard time keeping up with incoming pothole reports. Have you been able to change that?
Nixon: The maintenance department has managed to increase the response times overall since the initial surge of users. While we know that the app means we'll get more reports, it also creates efficiencies. For example, we can distinguish between city and county roads before going out to a site. So the potholes are filled by the appropriate agencies without wasted trips.
Pothole.info: Why do you suppose it was so successful so quickly?
Nixon: The great thing about the pothole mapping app is that it removes complication for the user. Now instead of making a phone call or visiting a website, a citizen using the mobile app can report the problem from the point and moment of discovery. This simply leads to much more community participation.
Pothole.info: Your app was developed specifically for Portland by your department. How much did it cost and do you think you have an advantage with your own?
Nixon: Actually, we have an app development specialist here on staff who was already working on a mobile mapping app. He managed to build this in his own time, so the costs were quite minimal. We like how this app works because it is designed to marry into the existing workflow. We have our in-house ticketing system for processing and completing work orders and it is now a seamless part of that.
Pothole.info: How many people use it and what do you think will happen in your second winter pothole season?
Nixon: Between February and September 2010 we received 625 pothole reports. We added the Droid app in September and as of December 2010 we know that 7,000 apps have been downloaded. So we expect we will get more reports in this year – and we're ready.
Pothole.info: What has been the public's response in Portland and elsewhere?
Nixon: Both the media and citizen response is positive and favorable [media coverage was widespread, well outside of the greater Portland area]. It boils down to extensive citizen participation, which is good. We've made the software open sourced so other cities can take advantage of it, and several are.
Building pothole apps elsewhere
Indeed, there are many cities building their own phone apps, "Government 2.0" as some are calling it, to enable reporting of potholes and other matters. The general term for such apps that pull people together in a single cause is referred to as "crowdsourcing."
In Chicago, it's not the city itself but a candidate for city alderman who developed "Chicago Works," a place for involved citizens to report potholes, graffiti and broken street lights. The candidate receives the reports directly in her office, which she then forwards to the appropriate parties at the city. Why would a candidate do this? She's building a constituency of community support.
This is similar to what was described in an ABC News special report on March 29, 2010 regarding the convergence of politics and technology.
According to Brent Blackaby, an online political strategist in the story, mobile software keeps voters engaged with an elected official during his or her term, yet avoids crossing the line between governing responsibilities and campaigning. Elected individuals need "to communicate with the people that support them [to show] all the good things that the elected official is doing so that people are still connected," says Blackaby. Those voters are "still in the loop with what's happening. When it comes time for campaign season to begin again, you've got a strong base of support and a strong team of people online, you have grassroots support behind you."
Clearly, they don't call it pothole politics for nothing.
Certainly, the ability of a mayor and a streets department or state department of transportation to fix potholes in a reasonable period of time can make or break an election. So it might just be a matter of smart governance that a number of cities have similarly developed their made-for-there pothole reporting apps. Each city takes a slightly different approach:
Boston: As previously reported on Pothole.info, a full 8,500 phones had downloaded Boston Citizens Connect 2.0 by early 2010. National Public Radio interviewed Boston resident Heather Sears, who formerly went through the bureaucracy of reporting problems to city hall. Sears clearly embraces phone app technology in her personal campaign to clean up the city (the app also includes graffiti reporting). "My graffiti picture is going to the dude who's going to fix the graffiti!" she says. "Directly to the dude! And that feels good."
Sandy Springs, Georgia: This Atlanta suburb launched its phone app, CoSSpotter, on December 1, 2010, which is available in iPhone, Blackberry and Android formats. And you thought they didn't get potholes in Georgia? This case shows such an app can be applied on a very local basis.
San Antonio, Texas (Bexar County): The app is called YourGOV, and it allows reporting of both potholes and roadkill (Armadillos, one assumes). The city worked with software developers CarteGraph who, according to Bexar County Engineer Renée Green, P.E., "It's a real change for an industry that typically lives by the Big Chief tablet and No. 2 pencil. This helps us be more efficient."
Los Angeles County and San Bernadino (California) County: With a population of 10 million and more streets, highways and roads than movie starlets, the CitySourced app launched in November 2010 and is usable on iPhone, Blackberry and Android formats. With so many convertibles and drivers on cellphones – and one of the most pothole-ridden cities in the country – one can only imagine how busy the county highway department will be as more and more people download the free app (most civic apps are provided without charge or are very inexpensive).
Long Beach, California: Named "Go Long Beach," this smartphone app allows citizens to report road, sidewalk and wall (graffiti) damage, but will eventually include broken water fountains in public parks, illegal dumping, missing street signs, overgrown weeds and sidewalk damage. "The 'Go Long Beach' App helps keep our community safe, clean and beautiful," Mayor Bob Foster told the Long Beach Post. The city's Director of Public Works, Michael Conway, told the paper, "The app will help us be even more responsive, because the quicker we know about a problem, the quicker we can fix it."
Charlotte, North Carolina: "My Charlotte" launched in November 2010 and can be purchased through iTunes, with Blackberry and Android versions a bit later. The app applies to pothole reporting, graffiti and accidents that cause traffic tieups. Its development cost $100,000, but is part of a broader program development they call "Margaret," an avatar that can answer many questions from the city databases. Margaret will operate via interactive voice response.
There's no such thing as "hush hush sweet Charlotte" if there are potholes to fix. This town is ambitious – and a place to watch, because if it works it could take the relationship between citizens and cities to a whole new level.
National apps – and what it might add up to
Entrepreneurs everywhere are jumping on the app rush with just about anything that marries cellular mobility with a function. Pothole reporting is no different, with the introduction of at least three players: SaveMyTire.com, SeeClickFix and 311 Universal.
SaveMyTire is the newest entry into the nationwide pothole reporting apps. Available for iPhone and Android platforms, it claims several functions that will make its reports more authentic. Those include a filtering method for identifying false reports. It also blocks multiple submissions by the same smartphone in the same geographical area (to prevent one person trying to scream attention for their particular pothole, we assume). SaveMyTire also requires "a certain threshold of reports on a given area before it is considered a genuine pothole location." Once reports reach that threshold, participating road maintenance departments are contacted via email.
It remains to be seen how well SaveMyTire manages to build up those relationships, while also getting the app distributed deeply enough such that the critical mass is reached to achieve effectiveness. But it seems to be working toward a goal of authenticity and veracity. If they are successful, it could be the killer app to define the category.
According to the online magazine Drivers.com, "the real benefits of [pothole reporting apps] lie in the ability to create 'neighborhood groups' and 'watch areas' to monitor issues and get feedback on results. In other words, it's entirely conceivable that individuals will take on pothole reporting as a mission, perhaps in teams, where such individuals will alleviate the workload of city, county and state employees who are otherwise responsible for identifying where the problem areas are.
That's the good news. The bad news might be that some neighborhoods or roads will get disproportionate attention because they are well organized, while others – perhaps where economics cuts into smartphone availability – get less. But given the free nature of these apps, and the likely full distribution of advanced cellular product availability, this problem will likely diminish over time.
SeeClickFix is another national pothole app that heeds this idea of community involvement. In fact, its tagline is "Power to the Community." There is a Community Groups page on the service's website that encourages volunteers to use SeeClickFix to "amplify their voices…by helping community leaders find and connect with others who care" via the app. Members of the community can post a head shot and earn civic points for reporting potholes, other pavement issues, graffiti and failed traffic control features (broken or missing lights and signs). The site has been up at least since 2008 and shows signs of a developing community with many members.
311 Universal enables citizens to shoot and send images and GPS coordinates for any kind of city problem that would otherwise be reported on a 3-1-1 non-emergency line. According to developer Steve Barham, reporting anything from vandalism to potholes will help cities and police departments to notice patterns that lead to better preventive law enforcement.
But as is abundantly clear, just recognizing and reporting a problem doesn't get it fixed. There are funding concerns across the board with regard to street repairs. This may limit what crews and materials are available for the "fix" phase of the workflow.
On the other hand, the political impetus to respond to constituents may be what drives success with pothole apps. The nation's roads are deteriorating faster than they are currently being repaired due to budget limitations. So citizen ire and subsequent reporting can only grow over time.
Consequently it likely will become very hard for elected officials to ignore the increasing number of pothole app reports. From that it's not hard to envision the net effect to be smoother roads – proving a real, quality-of-life benefit can actually result from gee-whiz technology.

Citizen Pothole Reporting Via Phone Apps Take Off, But Can Street Maintenance Departments Keep Up?

The storms that hit the Philadelphia-Baltimore-Washington D.C. area in mid-February 2010 were largely predicted by the Farmers' Almanac, months before they happened. Editor Sandi Duncan acknowledges their predictions were a bit off – they didn't expect it would land as far south as it did, which was attributed to a stronger-than-expected El Nino effect – but she uses the case to support their veracity at long-range weather forecasters. The potholes that popped up in the wake of the storms, however, were fairly predictable.
That's because potholes happen every year, everywhere. Moisture and freeze-thaw cycles contribute to them, but they are also a function of heat, traffic and poor road maintenance. There are as many potholes in Corpus Christi as there are in Camden.

So what is predicted for the mid-Atlantic region for the winter of 2011? "Very cold with average wintry precipitation," says Caleb Weatherbee (a pseudonym for the "official forecaster" of the Almanac). For the rest of the country, the guide predicts a generally milder winter than in 2010, however the benefits largely go to the southern West Coast, southwest and mountain states, while north of New York bitter cold will accompany average snowfall.
In all those regions, snow or sun, there will be potholes. That's because all across the country, from Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia all the way to Arizona, California and Oregon, the roads are getting older. America's post-war road building boom was strongest from the 1950s through the 1970s, giving us roads, highways and streets that are, on average, 50 years old. With age naturally comes deterioration, of course.
Higher traffic loads also cause pavement breakdown, and that peaked in 2007; in the years since, the recession actually has reduced auto and truck traffic by a few percentage points. But that recession also means tighter budgets for state, county and city transportation departments. This is a very bad thing where it comes to pothole prevention, unfortunately. As those old roads begin to develop cracks, they are not getting the proper maintenance that would prevent those cracks from growing.
The ways in which potholes develop illustrate this point. Potholes begin when moisture seeps through pavement cracks (or comes in through the side, as might happen in hurricanes and storm surges to coastal highways). That moisture can wear away the under-pavement, composed of gravel on top of soil in most cases. In colder climates, just about everywhere north of Florida, moisture in those spaces under pavement will expand when frozen, causing a temporary lift in the pavement that crumbles with the first heavy car or truck to roll over it. The pavement then crumbles, the underlayment is exposed and the disintegration continues with each passing vehicle and onslaught of precipitation.
The best defense in road preservation is a good offense. Repair smaller cracks and seams, and fill potholes while they are small. It takes a vigilant department of highway maintenance to stay on top of this – and the budget necessary to do so.
What is being done about saving the roads in the Philly-DC corridor?
One indicator of exemplary maintenance is where federal economic stimulus dollars (the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) have been allocated and spent.
That includes $13.4 million to rebuild deteriorated concrete roadbeds plus two interchanges on the SR 422 in Upper Providence, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. In Delaware County, Pa., about the same amount ($13.6 million) was spent on traffic control technologies such as vehicle detectors and travel time readers, which come in handy when road construction or just an inordinate number of potholes appear, slowing traffic. Drivers deserve to know if their planned itinerary will be plagued with delays.
What Pennsylvania is distinguished for is putting their stimulus allocations to work. According to Mary Rucci of the Pennsylvania Stimulus Accountability Office, "PennDOT has really done a marvelous job in getting projects out the door," she told an Ohio newspaper, the Morning Journal. "In fact, as a result of saving contracts, it has been able to reallocate funds to additional contracts beyond what it thought it could do originally." Reportedly, the under-utilized construction industry competitively bid down the cost of many projects, which in Pennsylvania meant eight more projects were funded with the savings. Overall, the five-county Philadelphia region has spent $257 million on 30 projects. That includes such projects as $164,800 spent to preserve or resurface Valley Road in Edgmont, Pa.
In Maryland, the state received $317 million in highway funding alone from the stimulus. Those dollars went to replacing the Liberty Road bridge over the Beltway, plus widening and improving Route 404, the highway that services the Delaware beach region. Also, $11.5 million was spent on resurfacing the Capital Beltway between the Potomac River and I-270 in Montgomery County, $10.9 million to rehabilitate the Northern Parkway in Baltimore (between Park Heights Avenue and Falls Road) and $10.9 million spent on Orleans Street, from Wolfe Street to Central Avenue in Baltimore.
Not all asphalt is the same
The nice, smooth ribbon of a new or repaved road makes all the headaches of potholes go away. But eventually, all roads endure the same deterioration.
However, a federally funded research program launched in the late 1980s has led to smarter road building and road repair. The trucks of steaming hot mix asphalt are a familiar sight at road construction and repair sites, but research has found that asphalt can be formulated for different climatic conditions and traffic loads. Also, cheaper cold mix asphalt is ideal for temporary detours, on and off ramps, and utility cuts, while a more permanent, premium (and somewhat more expensive) cold asphalt mix is now used by many highway departments to do quality pothole repair – the kinds of fixes that can last for years without divots and deterioration.
These asphalt technologies come along just in time for the Great American Road Breakdown, the phenomenon of 50-year-old streets and highways giving in to time. With better asphalt technologies, repairs can forestall complete rebuilding of a highway by many years, where an investment of $1 can mean saving $7 in repairs that would happen a year or two later.
Those potholes have a way of growing when no one is paying attention to them – regardless of whether winter conditions are mild or monstrous.

First Cold, then Snow, then Potholes – The Cycle of the Seasons Begins Anew for 2011 in Philly, Baltimore and Washington D.C.

The La Nina weather pattern is in force in the Pacific Ocean off Chile, and that means less snow in the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut tri-state region. At least, that's what the National Weather Service is predicting – a forecast that more or less concurs with the Old Farmer's Almanac, which makes its predictions based on sunspots, tidal waves and astrological positions. Says the Almanac: "Colder than normal winter temperatures" will prevail, but snowfall slightly below average.
But the question on the minds of all – once you get past the discomfort and inconvenience of freeze-your-hair-off winds and rush-hour blizzard conditions – is what will happen with the potholes. Will the exit ramps off the Major Deegan Expressway inflict mortal damage to your wheel rims come March? When borough traversing on the Cross Bronx Expressway, will you need to summon your inner NASCAR skills to avoid the chuckholes that otherwise spell doom to your axel? Will it be worse traveling in Westchester County than, say the Merritt Parkway in CT or I-78 in, around or through Newark?

Time will tell, but there's plenty to be worried about. Think back to the middle of May 2010, when the Metropolitan Transit Authority bridge and tunnel division announced they were changing all pothole repairs and highway sign maintenance to the graveyard shift, 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. That agency was working on closing a $400 million budget shortfall – a problem facing highway maintenance departments from sea to shining sea in America – and make no mistake, this was more about savings than it was traffic improvement. But now, instead of paying crews overtime to fix the potholes at night, they are working at regular wages.
Said MTA chief Jay Walder, there "isn't anything the drivers will notice, unless in a good way, because we're doing things at times when it's less disruptive to them."
Better pothole filling technologies
Walder has more tools to accomplish that than did his predecessors ten or more years ago.
The world of road paving and maintenance has improved considerably since the 1990s, due to a federally funded initiative called the Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP). The program looked at new techniques and technologies that can address problems that are becoming more prevalent in the country's aging infrastructure (given how massive road building projects under Robert Moses and the Eisenhower Administration happened 50 or more years ago).
SHRP research, conducted through both universities and private companies, studied the intrinsic nature of traffic, weather, asphalt, concrete and how local and state maintenance and safety programs were run. From this research, more than 100 new products were developed and shared with public highway maintenance entities.
What does this have to do with potholes in Passaic? Plenty. One of the breakthroughs of the research was the Superpave program (the name is trademarked), which breaks down into three parts:
<ul>
<li>Asphalt binder specifications that account for installation logistics as much as longevity.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>A design and analysis system, based on the volumetric properties of an asphalt mix.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Models for mix-analysis tests and performance prediction (i.e., knowing better how to adapt the asphalt formulation to specific roads)</li>
</ul>
Most important in the full breadth of SHRP research was designing pavement to fit variables in climate and traffic conditions. After all, a pretty but less-traveled road through the Poconos is going to experience different wear-and-tear than the Long Island Expressway, just as that highway is different from, say, any road in Arizona.
When it comes to asphalt installation and longevity, a breakthrough was the development of premium cold mix. Typically, asphalt is heated in a plant to give the petroleum-aggregate stone mix elasticity, enabling the mix to form to cracks and potholes in the road. The problem is that hot mix cools off within a few hours, especially in winter, such that a truckload of hot mix might need to return to the plant for expensive reprocessing in order to get it sufficiently warm enough to use. With cold mix, the product can be stored on highway property for months and used on an as-needed basis.
Good cold and bad cold (asphalt mix, not weather)
Note, there are different grades of cold mix asphalt. Lower grades tend to be used in emergencies, when a hole emerges overnight and needs to be fixed to enable a smoother morning rush hour. Unfortunately, that pothole patch might last about as long as it takes to drive from the Upper East Side to Montauk on a cold afternoon in January.
Premium grade (example: EZ Street Cold Asphalt) is another story. It costs a bit more than both hot mix and lower-grade cold mix asphalt, but the savings result in several important ways. First, crews can work from stockpiles, eliminating time-consuming trips to asphalt plants every few hours. More importantly, the longevity of the asphalt reduces the need for repeated repair of the same potholes in a single season, while fewer lawsuits result from motor accidents caused by poorly tended highway. Drivers too benefit when potholes and utility cuts are smoothed over by premium quality cold mix, because traffic flows more smoothly and they suffer less damage to their vehicles from pothole hits.
Of course, all of this is still dependent on budget. TodaysTrucking.com gave a callout to New Jersey as a good example of low administrative costs ($63,000 per mile) associated with state road maintenance expenses, as compared to California's $100,000 per mile in administration costs. But those are about just the overhead. The real number of concern is how New Jersey spends $1.1 million each year per mile of state highway (California's is $545,000 per mile). The difference is in part climate related, even though California is just as susceptible to pothole formation due to moisture and heat.
So will the departments of transportation in New York, Newark, East Orange, New Rochelle, White Plains, Commack, Greenwich and Norwalk fight the winter pothole season with a Superpave, premium cold mix strategy? Time will tell. But given the constrained budgetary conditions of each state and municipality, reflecting the cutbacks motorists and companies are experiencing, a smarter pavement maintenance program seems like a good offensive move against winter weather – regardless if the Old Farmer's Almanac is right or wrong.

Winter 2011 May Bring Average Conditions – And Extraordinary Potholes – to the NYC Tri-State Region

The weather predictions for the first part of the winter of 2010-2011 are coming in. Without question, in New England there will be snow, cold, rain, rain-snow mixes interspersed with fair and warmer days. In Massachusetts, there will be less snow than in Maine – mostly because Maine is bigger and further north. But suffice it to say, with precipitation, snow or rain or sleet come hazardous road conditions – both while the rain, snow and sleet fall and in the aftermath, because of the potholes they leave behind.
The Farmers' Almanac predicts the first widespread snow mixed with rain and ice sometime between November 4 and 7. More rain and wet snow is predicted for the mountainous areas (Massachusetts Berkshires, New Hampshire White Mountains, Vermont's Green Mountains), as is typical.
The Old Famer's Almanac – there are two different farmers' almanacs – predicts roughly the same conditions at the same time. The U.S. National Weather Service does not provide long-term forecasts.
On average, southern New England (Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island) get about 35 inches of snowfall per year, while the northern and more hilly and mountainous areas (Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine) get up to 100 inches annually. The average temperature, mid-November through the end of March, is 25 degrees Fahrenheit (-3 degrees Celsius).
True Yankees understand all of this, of course. It's why their outdoors wardrobes and clothing suppliers (LL Bean, et al.) may look the same – lots of plaid, wool and corduroy – but are actually a study in layering. When driving from, say, Northampton, Massachusetts to Providence, Rhode Island, you might go through weather and road condition changes two or three times. If the I-90 toll road is in good condition, cross your fingers the Worcester-Providence Turnpike is too. Hit a bad break in the pavement (thank you, winter potholes) and you're out there somewhere near Woonsocket changing a flat tire and hoping the wheel rims are ok. And glad you packed a rain slicker to protect you from a salty splash of semis barreling past you.
Leftover potholes
In New England, there is a lot of charm in old things – colonial barns and homes come to mind – which draw tourists from all over the world. But old potholes are not part of the enchantment. They simply are the result of snow, rain and the freeze-thaw cycles. They sometime pop up overnight, but at the same time get old fast.
That's because potholes have a tendency to grow. What is leftover from 2009, or earlier, is likely bigger today and will get bigger tomorrow and next year. Eventually, untended potholes become impassable roadways.
Of course, in New England there are plenty of solutions at work. Consider how in Boston, there were 8,500 people who downloaded the phone app that allows you to report street problems, such as potholes (<a href="http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/10/12/missing_link_app_will_connect_citizens/">Boston Citizens Connect 2.0</a>), directly to the city. That's 8,500 sets of eyes, combing the highways and byways – last winter the program worked only on Apple iPhones, but the update can be loaded onto Droid and BlackBerry phones and personal computers. So the citizens patrol in Massachusetts will likely double in size in 2011.
An expanded program might have prevented a major traffic tie-up in Medford, Massachusetts back in August, when a single, large pothole created rush hour mayhem on all four northbound lanes of I-93. Crews had to work through the night to repair it in time for the following morning rush hour, which typically carries more than 100,000 vehicles per day. Vibrations from a three-year, resurfacing project fixing on- and off-ramps from I-93 to Somerville and Medford actually led to the opening of potholes on the Valley Street overpass in Medford, tying up traffic on that street the same week.
Summarizing that problem to a reporter from the <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/08/i-93_in_medford.html">Boston Globe</a>, Frank Tramontozzi, chief engineer for the Department of Transportation, said "It's like when your neighbor's house needs painting and your neighbor doesn't paint it for 10 years, so instead of it needing painting now, the siding has rotted out."
Providence, Rhode Island voters certainly have potholes on their minds. At <a href="http://politicsblog.projo.com/2010/07/providence-mayo-6.html">a debate</a> last July among candidates vying for the mayor's seat, poor pavement was at the center of the conversation, ranking alongside education, city finances and downtown development. Responding to an audience member regarding potholes, the first candidate said it was a symbol of unresponsive government and poor communications between departments. A second candidate emphasized how potholes have been with the city for quite for time, while a third candidate interprets unfixed potholes as a symbol of abuse and corruption.
Pavement repair dollars from the Feds
The federal stimulus dollars are reaching the New England states, and where there is stimulus money, there are road repairs. Several prominent projects include:
<ul>
<li>The resurfacing of VT4A in Fair Haven, Vermont, a $2.6 million grant, as well as a resurfacing of VT25 in Bradford, Corinth, Topsham and Orange, Vermont with a $5.3 million grant.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The rehabilitation of roads and parking at SERC, Acadia National Park in Maine, with a grant for $256,000.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Highway reconstruction of Route 1A Ellsworth, beginning at the Rabbit Road, extending southeasterly more than 2.5 miles to Old Bangor Road, in Augusta, Maine with a grant of $7.8 million.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>4R resurfacing in District 1 of Concord, New Hampshire, with a grant of $3.3 million. Additionally in Concord, a $235,000 grant was awarded to provide a new top surface for the Stone Arch Bridge (which also included shoring up the stone masonry).</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>A particularly aggressive resurfacing, guardrail replacement and bridge rehabilitation (Wilbur Road) is underway in Lincoln, Rhode Island on Route 146. The grant amount is for $10.8 million.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Resurfacing of Route 18/28 from Bridgewater Center, Massachusetts to the Middleborough rotary (the intersection with Route 44), as well as drainage improvements, with a grant of $2.8 million.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Resurfacing on Route 6 in Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts, from Somerset town line to the Rehoboth town line, including repair of frost heaves and sidewalk reconstruction, for a cost of $4.2 million.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Resurfacing and related work on route 24 in Avon and Stoughton, Massachusetts, at a cost of $5.1 million.</li>
</ul>
Of course, it's pretty well accepted that many of these "shovel ready" projects that received priority funding in the stimulus program were not quite cleared and contracted for in 2009 or even 2010. But with winter weather on the way – and the near certainty of moisture and freeze/thaw cycles guaranteed to make every pothole larger and deeper – one hopes that Yankee ingenuity on these and hundreds of other road repair grants get those projects up and done in time.

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