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Potholes in PA.

May 4, 2008

Dodging The Damage - Potholes in PA

Holes turn roads into daily obstacle courses

By Tom Venesky tvenesky@timesleader.com
Sports Reporter
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WILKES-BARRE – When Tom Gallagher turns onto Coal Street from Business Route 309, his hands clench the steering wheel.

There is a maze at the intersection, Gallagher said, one that will pound and punish any vehicle that dares to enter.

“It’s a place where the pothole problem keeps rearing its head,” he said. “I’ve seen people swerve across the yellow line to miss them, but sometimes it’s unavoidable.”

It’s a problem that seems to occur more often in the spring, riddling city streets and interstate highways with crater-like potholes that can flatten tires and throw alignments out of whack with one good thump.

That’s why motorists like Gallagher are accustomed to swerving and dodging during their daily commute.

Besides patching or repaving, potholes are a fact of life for motorists who have no choice but to enter the maze.

In Wilkes-Barre, several hundred tons of patching material is slapped onto city streets in an effort to reclaim road surfaces that at one time were smooth, says Butch Frati, the city’s director of public works. Sometimes it feels like a losing battle, he said.

And at $38 to $51 per ton, the battle can be costly as well.

“We budget tens of thousands of dollars every year for potholes,” said Frati. “It’s a problem because we only have limited resources.”

The pothole battle isn’t limited to Wilkes-Barre. It can be found on suburban streets, rural roads and busy highways.

Tom Benz, who commutes daily into Wilkes-Barre from his home in White Haven, said the potholes are so bad on some roads it’s like driving through an obstacle course. He deals with the problem on Wilkes-Barre streets and rural roads such as Route 437. So far this year, his vehicle has come through unscathed.

But that wasn’t the case a couple years ago when Benz was driving through Wilkes-Barre Township.

“I hit a pothole head on,” he said. “It flattened the tire and bent the rim.”

Like Wilkes-Barre, the state Department of Transportation wages its own costly war against potholes, using close to 11,000 tons of patching material annually in District 4, according to spokeswoman Karen Dussinger. The district includes Luzerne, Lackawanna, Pike, Susquehanna, Wayne and Wyoming counties.

PennDOT has a good idea how a pothole forms, Dussinger said, but the problem is there are numerous causes.

A pothole forms when moisture enters a crack in the road surface. During the freeze/thaw cycles that are common during the spring, the moisture expands and creates more space for additional water to enter. The water travels down and undermines the pavement, creating a hollow space waiting to collapse as vehicles rumble over the surface.

Dussinger said slow-moving traffic can hasten the creation of a pothole because the weight of the vehicle is applied to the weak area for longer intervals.

But ultimately, it’s the winter weather of the region that makes potholes prevalent.

“It’s the freeze/thaw cycle,” Dussinger said. “What’s a crack today is a pothole tomorrow.”

It also didn’t help that from December to February, Pennsylvania experienced above-normal precipitation amounts, according to data from the National Climatic Data Center.

PennDOT has taken an aggressive approach to stay ahead of the pothole problem. Dussinger said crews are on state roadways filling and sealing cracks with a tar mixture to prevent water from getting inside.

The tar treatment is applied every few years in an attempt to maintain the road and prevent potholes.

“We’re not going to wait for the roads to get bad any more,” Dussinger said.

Neither is Wilkes-Barre. Frati said the city has been targeting stretches of road known for potholes and repaving them. Parts of Wilkes-Barre Boulevard, Northampton Street, Pennsylvania Avenue, Market Street, and North and South Main streets have benefited from the approach, he said.

Still, there are areas where the problem persists, such as Coal Street.

Frati said the entrance to Coal Street from Route 309 is a perfect example of a pothole-prone area because intersections have joints that are basically seams in the pavement. Utility cuts in the road surface are also areas where potholes tend to develop, he said.

“It’s an inherent problem in the Northeast, and this is the worst time of year for it because the frost is coming out of the ground,” Frati said.

And it’s a problem that patching and repaving can remedy in the short term, but as long as Pennsylvania has winters, the roads will have potholes.

“We average 80 events in our district each winter where we were either plowing or salting roads,” Dussinger said. “That means there is precipitation falling and freezing, and that’s why we’ll have potholes.”

Tom Venesky, a Times Leader staff writer, may be reached at 829-7230.

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