Chamber members’ clients rely on more than a safe roadway to travel from home to a business for the service or product they seek. They also rely on household income to make their purchases. In light of current legislation, not only do transportation funding woes jeopardize your customers’ safe travel, newly introduced woes jeopardize customers’ pocketbooks with trickle-down effect from higher user fees. Here’s what’s going on with transportation funding, and here’s how it affects you whether you’re in the road construction industry or not.

On March 17 of this year, the Senate passed H.R. 2847, the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment (HIRE) Act, by a 68 to 29 margin. Jay Hansen, the vice president of legislative affairs for the National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA), Lanham, Md., said the bill “marked the first significant piece of job-creation legislation to pass since President Obama and the Democratic Congress earlier in the year declared they would focus on reversing widespread unemployment.”

Maybe you call it a chuckhole or a kettle, but the causes of potholes by any name are many. Asphalt repair done right can fix most of it.

Anyone who claims to know the number of potholes in America must think they can count all the French fries sold at McDonald’s. Not only are there a gazillion of them, but there are new ones every day. Potholes are, unfortunately, a fact of life in a world of roads, where people and things have miles to travel.

Some potholes are just little cracks. And some could swallow an Escalade. Which is kind of the point: potholes grow bigger the longer they are left unfixed. They are almost alive.