The winter that has left us stranded at train stations, stumbling across snow mounds and stuck in traffic is delivering yet another bump in the road: potholes.
Luiz Franciss was thinking about lunch when he noticed trouble ahead: a big, fat pothole in the middle of Memorial Drive in Cambridge.
By the time he saw it, it was too late.
"I tried to move to the right, went over it with both tires, and the second one also hit," he said. "It was bad."
Franciss is now on foot while he awaits hundreds of dollars worth of repairs on the passenger-side wheels.
Of course it could be worse.
Car repairman Bill Creonte does his best to salvage the damaged wheels that roll in, but like the never ending snow, rims ruined by the winter-ravaged roads are piling up.
"Once a little pothole starts and a plow goes over it and makes it a larger hole, you just can’t avoid it," he said.
And you’ve got to wonder: will record snowfall translate into a record number of potholes? So far that does not seem to be the case. But public works chiefs like Dave Turocy of Newton say the real challenge to getting road craters filled is finding the manpower.
"The same people who are driving plow trucks consistently last three weeks are filling potholes as well, so it’s trying to juggle snow response and clean-up efforts with breaking crew free to fill up potholes," he said.
At the heart of all those ups and downs on local roads is a cycle of cold followed by something we’ve barely begun to see: temperatures above freezing.
"I could see a lot more potholes in the next couple weeks," said Turocy.
So buckle up, Boston, because we're in for quite a ride.
