There’s still a bit of a stubborn cold spell, but we’re heading toward everyday warm weather.
I’m grateful we dodged the last snowfall, but it’s hard to dodge winter’s gritty byproduct—potholes.
Teeth rattling, bottom bouncing, body-shaking potholes. I know because I’m dodging them every day.
Potholes are lingering testimony to this past crazy winter. The deep Arctic temperatures alternating with snow and infrequent but much warmer days. This is the perfect formula for potholes. Water seeps into cracks in the roads-- expanding until the next freeze, and contracting when the streets thaw, leaving the weakened road surfaces with deep holes.
Based on the amount of swerving I’ve had to do these last few weeks, it seems like more potholes than ever. But, MassDot says not really, it’s just that pothole season started in January, a couple of months earlier than usual.
State highways and city streets are now pockmarked with cavernous gaping holes, and worse, the subversively shallow ones hidden under a thin layer of pavement. In a street buffet spanning Bay State cities and towns, potholes are greedily swallowing axles, wheel bearings, and struts and belching up bent frames and twisted chassis.
Pothole hotlines have helped cities locate the worst. But repair crews play a game of asphalt whack-a-mole, cold patching one hole, only to have another pop out. Cold patching is a temporary fix; permanent repair requires hot materials, which can only be applied in weather that is consistently 40 degrees or warmer. Already the state has spent more than $600,000 on highway cold patching.
Potholes are more than an expensive nuisance. They are on the ground evidence of our crumbling infrastructure. Last year, former Transportation Secretary Ray La Hood highlighted the weakening infrastructure, describing America as “one big pothole.” And that is accurate, as most of Massachusetts’ pothole damage is on old roads, and bridges built more than 60 years ago.
This year, for the first time, the state is tracking pothole spending separately in order to determine which roads may need a full resurfacing instead of fixes. But, for right now, I’m viewing the streets as an urban Nascar track. I’ll be maneuvering around those potholes, channeling my inner Danica Patrick-- braking, banking, and cornering until the roads are whole again.
