Potholes, no paradise

By Cindy Landrum  

FEBRUARY 28, 2010 9:00 p.m. (1)

First, there’s snow.

Then comes the ice.

Now, there are potholes.

And as motorists undoubtedly have discovered as they’ve driven Upstate roads in recent weeks, there are more of them this year than usual because of the cold and inclement weather and shrinking road maintenance budgets.

“The recent winter storms played havoc on the roads that are already suffering from a lack of funding,” said Buck Limehouse, South Carolina’s secretary of transportation.

And that’s been keeping automotive repair shops a bit busier.

Potholes can cause cars to be knocked out of alignment, blow tires, bend rims, break suspensions and damage tie rods, ball joints and shock absorbers.

Many of the problems are on state-maintained roads in cities and on major roadways in Greenville County.

Statewide, the South Carolina Department of Transportation has received more than 1,500 pothole notifications during the past two weeks, many of them occurring on streets in need of maintenance that has been deferred because of shrinking budgets.

“We’ve seen a big increase with as wet and as cold as this winter has been,” said Jason Allison, maintenance director for the state Department of Transportation

In Greenville, the state has at least six people patching potholes all day, every day, he said.

Potholes form when temperatures flirt above and below freezing, repeatedly changing snow or rain from liquid to solid and back again.

When the weakened surface is pounded by wheels, chucks of asphalt are lifted up out of the road.

Over the past few weeks, the city of Greenville public works department has received about three dozen calls a day about potholes, said Mike Murphy, director of public works.

He said that’s slightly more than a typical January and February.

But, he said, it probably would have been worse if the city hadn’t completed several large street resurfacing projects on Academy Street, Pleasantburg Drive and most of downtown.

“The biggest and worst problems seem to be just outside the city limits,” he said.

But those are usually on state-maintained roads, not county roads, said Bob Mihalic, spokesman.

“We don’t have any issues with potholes,” said Mihalic, who said county crews have fixed one or two minor potholes in the northern part of the county within the past couple of weeks.

Sometimes the city will repair potholes on state roads within the city limits, Murphy said.

“We pick up a lot of state roads, especially if it creates a safety issue,” he said.If motorists can’t safely avoid potholes by steering around them, they should slow down to minimize the impact, according to AAA Carolinas. But motorists should not press their brake when going through one because a stopped wheel sustains more damage than one in motion.

If a vehicle is damaged because of a pothole, motorists can file a claim with the state Department of Transportation for possible reimbursement.