Brutal pothole season is taking a toll on road crews, drivers’ wallets

LAKEVILLE — Buddy Dawson, a mechanic at Hall’s Garage Auto Repair in West Cornwall, said a customer recently shelled out more than $1,000 for repairs to her Mercedes-Benz after hitting a nasty pothole.

“It’s on the lift now,” said Dawson, who had difficulty locating a replacement wheel for the newer-model car, which alone cost $700. The customer is in the same camp as a growing number of drivers, he said in an interview in late February. “We’re seeing a lot of low-profile cars. They don’t have a lot of suspension and the front-end parts do take a beating.”

While pothole season is nothing new to Northwest Corner drivers or town road crews assigned to patch them up, this year’s weather pattern of repeated freezing and thawing, plus heavy downpours, has created the perfect storm for road damage.

Highway department budgets take a hit

“It’s bad,” said Brian Carlson, highway foreman for North Canaan, summing up this year’s battle with potholes. “The water is not getting off the roads in many places. You fill one pothole and before long you’re going right back out to fill it again.”

Highly traveled roads tend to take the biggest beating, said Carlson, whose department oversees 33 miles of paved roads and about two miles of dirt roads. “North Elm is a busy street and water runs down the side. We are there daily checking it.”

The temporary cold patch material used to plug up gaping holes in the road surface during winter has little staying power, he said. “The cars are hitting and hammering it and it ends up on somebody’s lawn.”

It’s also expensive. Carlson noted that the temporary cold patch costs $120 a ton, while the more permanent hot patch costs $70 a ton. The longer into the season his crews need to make temporary repairs, the more costly the process. “It will take away from our paving budget, we won’t be able to pave quite as much” once warmer weather arrives, said Carlson.

Challenging time for road crews

This winter’s wildly varying temperatures and heavy rains are the perfect setup for potholes, which are created when moisture gets beneath the asphalt and then freezes and pushes the road surface upward. As warm temperatures thaw the ground, the weakened pavement is further damaged by traffic. Heavily traveled roads, as well as older roads, are more prone to potholes.

For town road maintenance crews, this year is akin to a game of pothole Whack-A-Mole. The gaping holes in the asphalt are filled with temporary patch material which weakens during the freeze/thaw cycle, “and that tends to blow them back out again,” said Jamie Reid, Road Foreman for the Sharon town highway department.

While most of Sharon’s 85 miles of roads are structurally sound thanks to a major paving project about a decade ago when roughly 30 miles were resurfaced, potholes are a recurring problem, said Reid, particularly on unpaved dirt roads. His crews do the best they can by laying crushed stone on unpaved roads, yet with every warm-up, “it gets really muddy.”

The scenario is similar in Salisbury. “Like every other town, we have potholes. We have guys out patching potholes right now,” reported Don Reid, the town’s road foreman. While complaints have been few, he said, the highway department is keeping an eye on problem areas, particularly Race Track Road. “There is a swampy area on the side of the road, and that makes it kind of hard to keep up” with recurring damage, said Reid.

It’s all in the timing

Tim Downs, supervisor for the Town of  Canaan/Falls Village highway department, said timing is the name of the game when it comes to repairing potholes. When craters in the road get filled with water and then freeze, road crews have to either wait for Mother Nature to melt the ice, or they take out a torch to do the job themselves.

The latter option, said Downs, is time consuming and can put a big dent in his department’s budget. Falls Village has 31 miles of paved roads, and roughly three miles are unpaved.

“How much money are you going to pour into a pothole when you can wait a couple of days to fix it?” said Downs. “It’s a matter of when you are going to get to it and then the conditions are right to patch it.”

Dangerous gashes on roadways, however, are a priority to repair under any circumstance, he said.  Some of the highly traveled areas that are taking a beating from this winter’s freeze/thaw cycle include portions of Sand Road, Johnson Road and Warren Turnpike.

Downs said he is not a fan of temporary repairs.  “It’s kind of a headache. You see a pothole and know you can’t really fix it right this time of the year. So the same guy who complained is going to call again next week and say, ‘Why didn’t you fix it?’”

On the bright side, said Downs, “Most of the town roads are 30-mile-per-hour roads, unlike the state highways” where higher speed limits and heavy traffic worsen the pothole potential.

How to report damage on state roads

State road crews, too, have their share of pothole woes, and safety of motorists is a priority for the Connecticut Department of Transportation, according to a statement from spokesman Josh Morgan.

“Every year the freeze/thaw cycle impacts the pavement and creates potholes, cracks and other road imperfections. We are constantly working to expand and improve our paving program to minimize future problems.

“It’s important to remember that CT DOT only maintains state roads, such as interstates, parkways and major roads. Issues on local roads should be reported directly to the municipality.”  Potholes on state roads can be reported to the CT DOT Customer Care Center by calling 860-594-2560 or emailing DOT.customercare@ct.gov.