Area Soldier Killed In Fort Hood Rampage
Stroger Makes Hollywood Play
Put Down Your Nanowrimo And Leave The House
Sox Shuffle Continues
News Flash - Chicago has a pothole problem. Ok, anyone who drives (or walks . . . or looks out their window) can see that, but apparently it’s reached new highs this year. CBS2 is reporting that the city has taken notice of over 7,000 unfilled potholes, and that’s just the ones that have been reported. Thomas Byrne, the Department of Transportation Commissioner, reports that crews are now working 7 days a week, filling 3,000-4,000 potholes every day, but they are barely making a dent in the problem. About a month ago, CBS also reported that these pothole patches sometimes only survive a few days.
What can you do about this problem, aside from buying a truck full of asphalt and becoming a rogue road crew? There are two important things every Chicagoan should know about potholes. If you see a pothole, call 311, the non-emergency line. Far from being annoyed, the city welcomes such calls - it’s the only way they know where to go. They keep a database and map of every reported pothole in the city, and whenever a crew is dispatched, they also fill every pothole in the area that they find.
If a pothole severely damages your car, pull over immediately. Take a picture of the car, take a picture of the pothole - you might even want to call and file a police report.The city has a form you can fill out to claim reimbursement for damages caused by city negligence, which includes potholes. One thing to watch out for - they want you to get two written estimates for the repairs and attach them to the claim. Hey, it’s still better than paying for that new front-end yourself.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Love how you can get reimbursed if you can go through all that. As if the hitting of scores of potholes doesn't gradually fuck up your vehicle by degrees. Hi, 311 I'd like to report *a* pothole, oh also there's like 70 more of them surrounding that pothole on the same block.
If this 311 thing worked, I would imagine that they would have fixed the intersection of Lincoln Avenue and Devon area because the potholes are the size of a bus tire and there are about 60 of them within a three block radius down Lincoln. But, this article has reminded me to call AGAIN! Has anyone had to swerve or dodge a swerve at Peterson and Ridge to avoid the pothole that probably reaches the lower mantle of the Earth's core? UGH! I am so sick of the crappy roads around this city!
I drove south on Lincoln this past Sunday from Lincolnwood and was appalled. As soon as you cross Devon (the boundary of Chicago) in to the city the road becomes worse than a third world donkey path. That is not an exaggeration. Driving faster than about 5 MPH and carefully swerving around the really big potholes is the only way to traverse that section. This might sound like a weird request, but if you are in the area it is quite a sigh to see. And in the "City that Works" no less.
One of the news programs had a segment on pothole repair with the required b-roll footage of the worker patching up an pothole. I almost fell out of chair when I watched it. The CDOT worker just threw some patch into the pothole that was still filled to the top with water! Since the cause of a pothole is water penetrating the road surface it seems that sealing water into the road is not the best way to fix the problem. I guess in the eyes of a city worker it is more profitable to do the same job poorly several times than to just do it right once.
So are you suggesting that city workers only fill potholes after the water has dried, or that they figure out some way to vacuum the water out? Can you imagine the logistics of working that out?
Asphalt--like all paving material--is porous. Seepage is inevitable. A good engineer takes this into account and makes sure the road is well-drained. The water at the bottom of a filled pothole drains out through the bottom.
The issue is bonding. If the hole is filled with water and has loose gravel in the bottom the patch material has no ability to bond with the solid substrate. It does take more time to vac out the water and loose gravel but the patch will last MUCH longer. I have seen crews filling potholes in the morning that are back by the afternoon. Why bother in that case? It just becomes an expensive numbers game. CDOT can claim X number of potholes filled but that number means nothing when the fix lasts only minutes.
Narragansett and Wrightwood was the worst I'd seen until I drove down Lincoln last week. Holy mother of God, those aren't potholes, those are chasms.
My god, I have to drive through this [going south on Lincoln after Devon] everyday from work. These potholes have been here for months! Considering its a high traffic area, I would have assumed it would have been reported multiple times and fixed. nope. Still there. I called 311 a month ago and they said its not the city. After finding this article, I called them up and the put in the request.
The potholes are like a road ravaged by bombs.
Whoever tried fixing it made it even worse as there are original potholes with "fixed" mountains. You hit a dip and then go in the air.
ARGH! The city needs not to fix the potholes, but repave the whole surface for half a block.
supposedly the technology exists to make roads that last forever (not hard to believe), but they won't ever be built because it would put construction out of business. fucking ridiculous. even when they "fix" potholes it's only temporary.
you folks need to pay more attention to the Grande World Class Efforts of our brilliant Mayor for Life, King Richard II! Cause,what you THINK are pot holes, and what looks like a thousand and one baby Lake Pontchartrains(
in the streets and on the side walks of neighborhoods like Logan Square),
are in actuality specially designed state of the art professional training obstacle courses for local Olympians in preparation for Chicago's hosting of The World Games!
There is no technology that will make a road last forever, nor will there ever be. It is a simple law of physics that all things decay, and this decay only happens faster with objects that take the beating roads take. Mountains erode, steel rusts and crumbles, that's just the way it is. Deal with it.
Sure, you could make a stronger, more durable road material, but this material would take more energy to produce and therefore be more expensive. At best, you'd wind up even in terms of cost. And even then, it would still fall apart eventually.
Deal with it.
Nope, sorry, this isn't a "deal with it" type of issue. Sure mountains crumble (Gibralter may tumble, they're only made of clay...) but Man didn't construct that mountain. And if steel begins to rust and crumble, men replace it or tear it down.
But maintaining safe roads is an issue that a modern city HAS to deal with. what, you think they can just wave it off and say, hey, shit happens as the roads get more and more decayed? Sorry, as much as they may want to do that, they can't. Roads are a modern convenience, they're a necessity. "Deal with it" ain't gonna cut it when you need roads to get necessary good in and out of this city. "Unnecessary" cars aren't the only vehicles that use our streets and highways. You want to see a city try up and fade away? Try making it inaccssible by roads.
There are many ways of dealing with it. One is to constantly whine that government isn't using the tax dollars we constantly complain about paying to buy a big enough magic wand. Another is to accept that a certain amount of maintenance will always be necessary and fix what we can. We have to be realistic in what we expect. A road in our climate takes an immense amount of abuse, we've been through one of the worst winters on record, and there is no magic solution floating around the ether.
So ... deal with it.
One is to constantly whine that government isn't using the tax dollars we constantly complain about paying to buy a big enough magic wand.
I don't mind paying my taxes at all, it's the lack of tranparency, corruption and enrichment of cronies that bothers me. People who argue the 'no taxes' angle are morons but that doesn't change that tax money in this city is probably often squandered.
Sorry, that should have said "Roads AREN'T a modern convenience..."
If the city knows about 7,000 potholes and is filling 3,000-4,000 a day, why are they "barely making a dent". Wouldn't they be done with the list in 2 days?
Because a) That's only what's been reported - so if they send a crew to fix 1 of those 7000, they might spend the whole day fixing 1000 unreported ones in the vicinity and b) because, as mentioned, they're popping up as fast as they are being repaired.
No. Those numbers given make it seem like a managable problem.
You are sooooooo right BluelineFairy and of course I just must dreamed those Suntimes stories about how Daley's cronies got caught using substandard road material to "fix" potholes, so that their contracts could be renewed to refix the same potholes the next year. Now please excuse me while I go find a way to beat up on Todd Stroger, cause you are right, we just need to shut up and "deal with it" when it’s about Daley screwing us again.
I do believe that the problem is that the streets are paved with asphalt, which gets potholes easily. The expressways are paved with concrete, which last much longer and don't pothole as much, but is more expensive. So it seems to me, if the regular streets were paved with concrete, there would be fewer potholes. Nobody's doing this because it's more expensive, and it doesn't hurt that somebody is making some bank off filling these potholes when the asphalt breaks down after a few years.
Either way, it is a travesty. Maybe the potholes will be Daley's downfall, like Bilandic and the snowplows.
Maybe the potholes will be Daley's downfall, like Bilandic and the snowplows.
Yeah right.
How many people are getting rich off this? Lots I bet. This city is so corrupt.
I fell in a pothole (warp zone) yesterday and ended up in world 3-4 in super mario bros. it was fucking amazing.
lol, I fell into one and went to a old kingdom where Daley was the king and surround by whispering power brokers. Oh wait.....
You think Chicago's bad, try the North Shore. Especially Evanston & Wilmette. I'm convinced the municipal governments up here think the fed & state should repair all the roads: "Sheridan Road? Nu-uh, that's U.S. 41, we don't do that. Lake Avenue? Nope, Illinois Route 43, that's IDOT. We don't do that." and so on.
How on earth can they fill that many potholes in a day?
The problem is Richie Rich Daley. Chicago spends too much money on tracking down red light racers and racketeering, and very little to no money repairing or replacing entire streets with durable pavement.