Bumpy ride ahead through pothole purgatory

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Feb 27, 3:54 PM EST
Bumpy ride ahead through pothole purgatory
By ALLEN G. BREED

Hate potholes? Well, unless you and your elected officials are ready to cough up billions more for better roads and proper preventive maintenance, buckle up, `cause it's going to be a bumpy ride.

"What people have to understand is you can't have a pothole without first having a crack in the pavement surface," says engineer Larry Galehouse, director of the National Center for Pavement Preservation, a quasi-government entity affiliated with Michigan State University. "Agencies have been cash-strapped for a number of years, and now it's all coming home to roost."

And despite all the advances in patching materials and equipment in recent years, engineers say that until someone ponies up, it's going to remain a case of patch as patch can.

"If you've got a pavement in poor condition that's got a lot of alligator cracking ... where water is getting into the pavement and freezing and thawing, it's going to break up the structure," says Kevin J. Haas, a traffic investigations engineer with the Oregon Department of Transportation in Salem. "It's just the law of sciences and physics and thermodynamics and whatever other laws you want to throw in there."