When residents can't get a pothole fixed, the first problem often isn't asphalt. It's information. Alachua County, Florida, is trying to fix both.
On September 15, the county launched an online Pothole Portal built on PSD Portal's "Citywide" software. Residents can pinpoint a defect on an interactive map, report it with or without creating an account, and track it through the county's digital system. Each report is routed automatically to the appropriate road file, and staff use the portal's analytics to prioritize repairs and allocate resources.
<figure class="ai-figure"><img src="https://zn2m7h2eiy0bs6ve.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/uploads/ai/alachua-county-s-pothole-portal-shows-where-patchi-09aac1d7e15f.jpg" alt="Rainwater sits in web-like fatigue cracks across a worn asphalt lane." width="1280" height="720" loading="lazy" decoding="async" /><figcaption>AI-generated illustration.</figcaption></figure>
On September 30, the county shared its first results. More than 400 reports had come in during the portal's first two weeks. Public Works crews had filled 2,206 potholes using 85.52 tons of material, and had strip-milled and resurfaced 3,263 linear feet of roadway using another 71.23 tons. The county says it will publish weekly progress reports.
<h2>Frustration came first</h2>
The portal didn't arrive in a vacuum. WCJB reported that it launched amid growing resident frustration over the number of potholes in the county. At a September 22 county commission meeting, residents described swerving vehicles, bent rims and blown-out tires on one southwest Gainesville road, according to The Independent Florida Alligator. Public Works Director Ramon Gavarrete described the portal as part of "a concerted effort to improve our pothole repair effort," alongside new crews and machinery.
<h2>Two numbers, two kinds of repair</h2>
The most useful detail in the county's update is the split between its two repair types.
Pothole filling addresses discrete defects: a hole is cleaned out, filled and compacted. Strip milling goes further. The county uses a 4-foot-wide milling machine to remove damaged pavement in targeted areas and replace it with new asphalt, without resurfacing an entire road.
That distinction matters because not all pavement damage is a pothole problem. Speaking about Southwest 75th Street, Gavarrete told commissioners that widespread fatigue cracking calls for more than patching: "The only solution with the problem is milling and resurfacing all the roadways." Fatigue cracking, often called alligator cracking, is a sign that the pavement structure itself is wearing out. Patching individual holes on a road like that is a holding action.
The county's approach reflects a sound maintenance hierarchy:
<ul>
<li>Isolated potholes on otherwise sound pavement: fill them quickly and well.</li>
<li>Localized failure along a lane or wheel path: strip-mill and resurface that section.</li>
<li>Widespread fatigue: plan and budget for full milling and resurfacing.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Getting more from every pothole fill</h2>
Even with milling in the mix, filling remains the highest-volume job, and it's where material choice has the biggest effect on repeat visits. Florida's afternoon storms and summer heat make for a tough test: wet holes, hot pavement and steady traffic.
That's the kind of job EZ STREET® Ambient® Asphalt is engineered for. It's ready to use from the bag or in bulk, formulated to work in water, and bonds to asphalt and concrete without a tack coat. It stays thermally resilient as pavement temperatures swing, and it's ready for traffic immediately after compaction. For a county working through hundreds of portal reports, a material crews can place even when the hole is wet lowers the odds that the same location shows up again in next week's report.
<h2>Data plus durability</h2>
Alachua County's portal is a smart step. Map-based reporting cuts duplicate calls, helps crews route efficiently and gives managers evidence for where milling budgets should go. Weekly public updates build trust. The next step for any agency using this kind of system is to track repeat reports at the same location, which is the clearest measure of whether repairs are holding.
The same logic works for homeowners' associations, campuses and commercial lots: log defects, look for patterns, and match the repair to the damage. When the data shows a road needs milling, mill it. When it shows an isolated pothole, fill it once with a performance-proven material such as Ambient®. Learn more at <a href="https://ezstreetasphalt.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ezstreetasphalt.com</a>.
<hr />
Source notes: Alachua County via Alachua Chronicle (Sept 30, 2026); Alachua County (Sept 15, 2026); WCJB (Sept 15, 2026); The Independent Florida Alligator (Sept 23, 2026).

Alachua County received over 400 pothole reports in two weeks and filled 2,206 holes while milling 3,263 linear feet of road.

Alachua County Portal Tracks 400 Reports

Alachua County's Pothole Portal Shows Where Patching Ends and Milling Begins

Plymouth didn’t try to wish its potholes away. It put a number on them and gave the public a counter to watch.
Project Pothole, launched for the 2026/27 financial year, commits an extra £4.06 million to road repairs and maintenance. The target is 20,000 potholes and road defects, more than double the city’s usual annual output of about 8,300. The council’s own counter, updated after August, showed 1,110 repairs that month and 6,383 since April. That’s roughly 32% of the annual goal. Plymouth has 524 miles of roads and 744 miles of pavements, so that’s a visible change of pace after a wet winter sent defect reports sharply higher.
The interesting part isn’t only the volume. It’s the toolkit. Plymouth isn’t betting on a single treatment. The programme combines traditional fills, specialist seek-and-repair teams, Roadmender technology using sustainable materials, Velocity spray-injection repairs, resurfacing schemes, surface-preservation treatments covering tens of thousands of square metres, and extra gully clearance to keep water from causing the next failure. Different defects get different tools. That’s how you repair more without pretending every hole is the same.
Drivers will judge the project the only way that counts: whether the same crater greets them after the next storm. Councils across Britain have learned, sometimes the hard way, that a high fill count can sit alongside a high rework rate when interim repairs don’t hold. Plymouth’s own messaging is refreshingly honest about that. Not every defect will be fixed right away, and not every road will be resurfaced this year. Priorities follow safety, condition data, inspections, and resident reports. What residents should notice is more crews, in more places, more often.
That honesty is useful for agencies and private managers elsewhere. A year-long blitz only pays off if each method matches the defect and the material can handle real traffic and real weather. Spray injection can be fast on shallow failures. Preservation can buy years for a surface that still has life. Deep, wet, or heavily loaded holes still need a fill that bonds, compacts, and stays thermally stable when temperatures swing.
The same logic applies at a smaller scale for sites outside the council programme, such as retail parks, industrial estates, and campus roads. You don’t need a £4 million counter. You need a repair you can use when a defect appears, without waiting months for a full resurfacing window.
EZ STREET® Ambient® Asphalt fits that gap. It’s a ready-to-use, engineered mix for potholes and related pavement repairs, available in bags or by the ton. When the hole is properly prepared and compacted, crews can place Ambient® without on-site mixing or heating and open it to traffic promptly. Its thermally resilient performance is designed for enduring patches rather than a short-lived plug. Details are at <a href="https://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/what-is-ez-street" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ezstreetasphalt.com</a>.
Plymouth’s lesson for 2026 is simple. Fund the surge. Track the progress in public. And treat “how we fill” as seriously as “how many we fill.” Volume without durability just means revisiting last month’s map faster.
<hr />
Source notes: Plymouth City Council (Project Pothole page); The Moorlander (Aug 2026); <a href="https://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/what-is-ez-street" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ezstreetasphalt.com/what-is-ez-street</a> Cover photo: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jet_patching_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3452555.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">Michael Trolove</a>, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">CC BY-SA 2.0</a>.

Plymouth’s £4.06m Project Pothole has passed 6,383 repairs toward a 20,000 target. The real lesson is using more than one repair tool.

Plymouth Project Pothole Hits 6,000 Repairs

Plymouth’s Project Pothole Hits 6,000 Repairs — Why Method Mix Matters

In a city that rarely sleeps, closing a lane for one shallow pothole can feel like punishing everyone for a single square metre of failed asphalt.
Bengaluru is testing a different approach. In mid-September 2026, Greater Bengaluru Development Minister Krishna Byre Gowda launched a ₹2 crore Jet Patcher pilot with the Central City Corporation. The machine was demonstrated on the road between Vidhana Soudha and the M.S. Building. Officials say one unit clears debris from the hole, applies binder and repair mix, and can return traffic in about ten minutes. That avoids the full roadblock a traditional hot-mix setup often needs for an isolated hole.
The minister was clear about what the technology is for. Jet Patcher targets smaller failures, roughly two to three inches deep (up to about 50 mm). It isn’t meant for deep structural craters where both the asphalt and the aggregate have failed. Bengaluru’s roads produce both kinds, he noted. In some places only the top layer has worn away. In others, the damage goes deeper and needs a different response. The pilot will show whether quick, low-disruption repairs can scale across the city’s corporations if the results hold.
That honesty about limits is as useful as the machine itself. Hot-mix crews bring strength and familiarity, but they also bring constraints: rollers, plant schedules, monsoon interruptions, and the awkward cost of mobilising a full setup for one lonely defect. A city with only one repair method will either over-mobilise for small holes or leave them until they grow into big ones. Matching the tool to the defect protects both budgets and commute times.
There’s a wider lesson for municipal and private pavement managers. Innovation isn’t a press event. It’s a portfolio. You want fast, traffic-friendly methods for shallow failures and heavier treatments when the base is gone. You want drainage and surface care so water doesn’t keep winning. And you want materials that don’t force crews to choose between “wait for perfect conditions” and “throw something in and hope.”
Campuses, logistics yards, and local streets often need a ready-to-place option between capital schemes. EZ STREET® Ambient® Asphalt is engineered for enduring patches that stay thermally stable. It’s ready to use in bags or by the ton and designed to go in without on-site heating when the hole is properly prepared and compacted. It’s a performance-proven way out of the temporary-fix cycle. See <a href="https://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/what-is-ez-street" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ezstreetasphalt.com</a>.
Bengaluru’s pilot won’t erase every monsoon crater. No single machine will. If the ₹2 crore test succeeds, though, it could change the default for the small, widespread failures that clog traffic and frustrate drivers every week. Fix the right hole with the right method, reopen the road, and save the heavy crew for the defects that actually need it.
Cities watching from afar should take the cue. Don’t ask whether a new repair technology is magic. Ask which defects it fits, how long the patch lasts, and whether your toolkit still has an engineered answer when the hole is deeper than the pilot’s sweet spot.
<hr />
Source notes: India Today (11 Sep 2026); The Hindu (11 Sep 2026); New Indian Express (12 Sep 2026); <a href="https://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/what-is-ez-street" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ezstreetasphalt.com/what-is-ez-street</a> Cover photo: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Potholes_in_Bengaluru_road.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">Mallikarjunasj (cropped)</a>, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">CC0</a>.

Bengaluru’s ₹2 crore Jet Patcher pilot aims to fix shallow potholes in about 10 minutes without closing roads. Why matching tech to defect depth matters.

Bengaluru Pilots a Jet Patcher for Potholes

Bengaluru’s Jet Patcher Pilot — Fixing Small Holes Without Stopping the City

You don’t need a press conference to know when a city’s streets are fighting back. You feel it in the steering wheel. You hear it in the rim. You see it in the orange cones that seem to multiply after every hard winter.
On 17 September 2026, New York City turned that daily grind into a milestone. Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani joined Department of Transportation crews — and a 311 worker who fields the complaints that start the whole chain — to fill the city’s 200,000th pothole of the year on Troutman Street in Bushwick. The mayor’s office framed the moment as proof that “little things” still signal whether government is delivering: catch basins that drain, playgrounds that work, and roads that don’t punish every commute.
The numbers behind the photo op are what matter for pavement people. NYC DOT says roadway crews still average about 3,000 pothole repairs a week. Earlier in the spring, the city had already marked its 100,000th fill of the year on Staten Island — described as the highest first-100-days total in more than a decade. That pace only makes sense after a brutal winter. Freeze-thaw opens cracks. Water works in. Traffic finishes the job. Then the phones light up.
Here’s the part that deserves more attention than the anniversary fill itself: while crews chase defects, milling and repaving teams are also racing through the warm months. Officials say the city has already paved about 757 lane miles in 2026 — roughly the distance from New York to Nashville. City leaders keep repeating a simple hierarchy. Filling potholes keeps people moving today. Fresh pavement is still the most effective way to stop next winter’s crater from forming in the first place.
That pairing — reactive repair plus capital resurfacing — is the real story for agencies and private managers everywhere, not just the five boroughs. A high fill count can mean a city is responsive. It can also mean the network is producing defects faster than capital work can erase them. Both can be true at once. The constructive response isn’t to mock the milestone. It’s to ask whether every fill is engineered to last through the next storm cycle, and whether the streets that keep failing are queued for real surface work.
New Yorkers are encouraged to report problems through 311 — calls, app, web, and more — because a city this size can’t rely on drive-by spotting alone. The same logic applies on a smaller campus, industrial park, or HOA lot. If you wait until a defect swallows a suspension, you’ve already paid more than a timely repair would have cost.
For sites that can’t wait on a full mill-and-overlay window, material choice still decides whether a repair is a pause or a solution. <a href="https://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/what-is-ez-street" target="_blank" rel="noopener">EZ STREET® Ambient®</a> Asphalt is a ready-to-use, performance-proven mix designed for potholes and related pavement repairs. It’s available in bags for smaller jobs and by the ton for larger ones. Crews can place it without on-site mixing or heating when the pavement is properly prepared and compacted. Public product guidance highlights bonding to asphalt, concrete, and itself; workability in wet conditions; instant traffic readiness; stockpileability; and thermally resilient performance across temperature swings.
None of that replaces a city’s 757-lane-mile paving program. Ambient® isn’t a substitute for structural reconstruction when a base has failed. What it can do — for municipal contractors between plant runs, for facility teams after utility work, for property managers who can’t close a lot for a week — is close the gap between “reported today” and “open to traffic now” with an engineered fill that aims to endure rather than wash out on the next wet week.
If your region just celebrated a big repair number, treat it as a progress check, not a finish line. Keep reporting defects early. Keep funding the resurfacing that prevents them. And when you do need a spot repair that has to perform under real traffic and real weather, look for materials built for that job — not a temporary scoop that invites a second visit.
New York’s 200,000th fill is a reminder that pavement work is never finished. It’s a practice. The cities that win on it combine volume, visibility, and materials that don’t make crews come back for the same hole twice.
<hr />
Source notes: NYC Mayor’s Office / NY1 (17 Sep 2026); <a href="https://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/what-is-ez-street" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ezstreetasphalt.com/what-is-ez-street</a> Cover photo: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:54th_St_Madison_Av_td_(2018-08-16)_04_-_New_Asphalt.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">Tdorante10</a>, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">CC BY-SA 4.0</a>.

NYC marked its 200,000th pothole fill of 2026 while paving hundreds of lane miles. Here’s why volume and prevention have to travel together.

New York Hits 200,000 Pothole Repairs — And Why Repaving Still Matters More

Most potholes start as annoyances. A few become emergencies — the kind that shut lanes, stretch into multi-day work, and leave thousands of drivers checking alternate routes.
In early September 2026, that’s what happened on Interstate 80 through Parleys Canyon in Utah. UDOT crews tackled a large pothole under the center median near milepost 132. The left lane closed in both the eastbound and westbound directions. Utah Highway Patrol said the damage needed more extensive work than a usual quick patch. Closures were expected through Thursday and possibly into Friday morning.
Lt. Zach Randall of UHP put it plainly: it was a really bad hole that required more than a typical asphalt touch-up.
When a hole reaches that scale on a canyon interstate, traffic pays first. Freight schedules slip. Commuters add minutes — or hours. Detours push volume onto roads that weren’t built for the surge. Safety risk rises wherever congestion stacks up behind cones.
<h2>Why “usual quick patch” sometimes isn’t enough</h2>
Emergency highway repairs often start late in the defect’s life. Water has already worked under the surface. Traffic has hammered the edges. What looks like one hole may be a cluster of failed material that has to be cut back, cleaned, and rebuilt so the next freeze doesn’t reopen it.
That’s why Parleys Canyon needed more than a drive-by fill. Extensive work protects the structure. It also costs closure time.
The tension for every DOT is obvious: do it right, but don’t own the corridor for days if you can help it. Materials that bond well, handle wet conditions, and go traffic-ready help shrink that window without cutting corners on quality.
<h2>Disruption is a real budget line</h2>
Lane closures aren’t free. They include crew overtime, traffic control, public messaging, and the harder-to-price cost of delayed goods and frustrated drivers. On a route like I-80 through Parleys Canyon, even a left-lane restriction both ways ripples far beyond the milepost.
Preventive maintenance is the ideal — catch small defects before they become median-level emergencies. But when the emergency arrives anyway, the playbook needs options that let crews place an enduring repair and reopen lanes as soon as the work is sound.
<h2>Where engineered ambient asphalt fits</h2>
<a href="https://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/what-is-ez-street" target="_blank" rel="noopener">EZ STREET® Ambient®</a> is designed for crews who need throw-and-go performance without sacrificing bond strength. It’s a ready-to-use, performance-proven ambient asphalt technology. No mixing. No tack or bonding agent required. Superior adhesion to asphalt, concrete, and itself. Instantly ready for traffic once placed and compacted.
On highway edge and surface repairs, that matters. Wet pavement isn’t a deal-breaker. Thermally resilient behavior across varying temperatures supports work in the imperfect conditions emergency crews often face. Stockpiling for months without degradation means the material can sit ready near high-risk corridors before the call comes in.
For larger projects, EZ STREET Ambient is available by the ton. For smaller follow-ups after the main emergency cut-out, bags keep the toolkit flexible. Either way, the goal is the same: enduring repairs that help agencies exit the site sooner and come back less often.
<h2>A practical checklist after the cones go up</h2>
<ul>
<li>Diagnose depth, not just diameter. A shallow fill over a deep failure invites a return visit.</li>
<li>Match material to reopen needs. If the corridor can’t wait on long cure times, choose traffic-ready options.</li>
<li>Plan for wet and variable temps. Canyon weather doesn’t wait for ideal paving days.</li>
<li>Communicate clearly. Drivers behave better when they know how long a restriction will last — UDOT’s traffic feeds are a good model.</li>
<li>Stock for the next one. Emergencies favor agencies that already have engineered materials on hand.</li>
</ul>
Parleys Canyon won’t be the last place a “really bad pothole” forces left-lane closures both ways. The question is whether the next one holds crews for days — or whether better prep and better materials turn an emergency into a contained, shorter disruption.
Enduring, traffic-ready fills won’t erase the need for full reconstruction when a pavement has failed from below. They can, however, give DOTs a stronger middle path: repair that’s faster to place, stronger in bond, and kinder to the drivers stuck behind the signs.
When traffic is already paying the price, every hour you can give back counts.
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Source notes: TownLift — I-80 Parleys Canyon emergency repair (Sep 3, 2026); <a href="https://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/what-is-ez-street" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ezstreetasphalt.com/what-is-ez-street</a> Cover photo: Gareth Williams, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">CC BY 2.0</a>.

UDOT’s emergency I-80 pothole repair at MP 132 meant left-lane closures both ways. Faster, traffic-ready materials can shrink disruption.

When a Pothole Becomes an Emergency: Lessons from I-80 in Parleys Canyon

New gear gets the headlines. Fair enough — a machine that cuts, cleans, and speeds a repair is easy to photograph. But longevity lives in the details: the material in the hole, how it bonds, how it handles heat and freeze, and whether the patch is still sound two winters later.
Oxfordshire County Council and contractor M Group put that idea to a real test. After a harsh winter spike in defects, they closed Wildmere Road in Banbury and divided a 700-metre stretch into sections. On that single corridor they trialled 15 different pothole and patch methods — some already in use locally, others new technology sourced by M Group.
It was the council’s second innovation event of this kind, after a 2023 trial in Steventon with seven methods. This time the scale was larger, and the monitoring plan is serious: regular checks over about two years, comparing repair type, equipment, material, labour, time, longevity, waste, carbon impact, recycled content, and productivity.
<h2>Winter pressure made the case for testing</h2>
Oxfordshire’s winter backdrop was brutal. A prolonged freeze followed by extended rain drove emergency reports up sharply. The council was receiving more than 1,000 reports a week at peaks, topping 1,300 defects in a single week in early March. Crews expanded from seven to 25. Specialist kit — including a Bobcat planer, Dragon Patcher, and thermal road repairs — came in to cut the backlog.
Since January 2026, M Group repaired more than 33,000 highways defects, against 37,042 potholes filled across the whole of 2024–25. Volume alone doesn’t fix the network. Better methods do.
Councillor Liz Leffman framed the trial as a value-for-money exercise across a 3,000-mile road network: test what’s new, keep what works, drop what doesn’t. Richard Lovewell of M Group stressed adapting techniques for wetter winters and hotter summers — exactly the climate squeeze many UK authorities feel.
<h2>Machines are only half the toolkit</h2>
Elsewhere in England, councils are debating and trialling equipment such as the JCB Pothole Pro. Suffolk began a trial after the machine became available on free loan. Leicestershire has revisited it after earlier questions about economics. Norfolk and other authorities have also been part of the wider conversation. JCB says a typical site can be prepared in about eight minutes before a conventional crew completes the patch with hot asphalt. Results vary by network: dense urban grids behave differently from scattered rural defects that need nimble moves between sites.
Spray-injection patching has also scaled. Velocity Roads Group reports repairing around 750,000 defects per year with a process that cleans with compressed air, seals with emulsion, and compacts coated aggregate from the bottom up — often traffic-ready quickly and useful for preventative find-and-fix work on unclassified roads.
Those stories matter. They show UK local government is hungry for productivity. They also underline a quieter truth: cutting and cleaning a defect faster still leaves you choosing what goes back in — and how that fill behaves through the next two winters.
<h2>What councils should ask while they compare methods</h2>
Oxfordshire’s two-year monitoring list is a strong template. Longevity and carbon aren’t side notes; they’re the scorecard. When you evaluate materials alongside machines, ask:
<ul>
<li>Does the product bond to existing asphalt (and concrete where needed) without a separate tack step?</li>
<li>Can crews place it in damp conditions when the calendar won’t wait?</li>
<li>Is it traffic-ready immediately, or does reopen time eat the productivity gain from the machine?</li>
<li>Is it thermally resilient when summer heat and winter freeze both hit the same patch?</li>
<li>Can it be stockpiled so surge crews aren’t waiting on fresh batches?</li>
</ul>
<a href="https://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/what-is-ez-street" target="_blank" rel="noopener">EZ STREET® Ambient®</a> asphalt answers several of those questions for agencies building a modern materials palette. It’s engineered, performance-proven ambient asphalt technology — ready to use, cost-efficient for highways through driveways, and enduring when placed correctly. It works in water. It offers superior bonding to asphalt, concrete, and itself. Throw-and-go application means no mixing and no tack required. Stockpiling for months without degradation supports the kind of surge capacity Oxfordshire needed when reports spiked. Available in bags for small repairs and by the ton for larger programmes, it fits both reactive fills and planned patching trials.
Councils comparing longevity shouldn’t treat equipment and materials as separate debates. A fast cut with a short-lived fill is still a callback. A slower prep with an enduring, thermally stable ambient asphalt can win on whole-life cost.
<h2>The Banbury takeaway</h2>
Wildmere Road will teach Oxfordshire which combinations hold up. Other authorities can borrow the mindset now: run fair comparisons on one stretch, measure more than speed, and keep an open door to engineered ambient options like EZ STREET Ambient alongside planers, spray-injection, and specialised patchers.
Pothole strategy isn’t machines versus materials. It’s machines and materials — chosen together, tested honestly, and scored on how long the road stays smooth for the people who pay for it.
<hr />
Source notes: Oxfordshire County Council methods trial; BBC Suffolk Pothole Pro; Open Access Government / Velocity spray-injection; <a href="https://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/what-is-ez-street" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ezstreetasphalt.com/what-is-ez-street</a> Cover photo: Tim Sheerman-Chase, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">CC BY 4.0</a>.

Oxfordshire trialled 15 repair methods on one Banbury road. Machines help — but thermally resilient materials decide how long patches last.

Beyond the Machine: Why Material Choice Still Decides Pothole Longevity

Asphalt is cheaper to install, and easier to repair, than cement concrete. But both require regular maintenance to ward off deterioration – including potholes.
According to the Federal Highway Administration (FWHA), about 94 percent of all surfaces used for transportation – roads, streets, and highways – are paved with asphalt. The characteristics and properties of bitumen-based asphalt, also known as blacktop, are quite different than those of concrete, even if the latter is used in a small portion of roadway construction. A big contributing factor to why blacktop is used far more than concrete is in the maintenance and repair required for each.
Simply put, a blacktop patch of a pothole is easy to apply and fairly common. It is also, mile for mile, less expensive to build. A pothole filled with the right asphalt repair material, done under the right conditions, is also relatively inexpensive. Repairing the deterioration in concrete slabs is an entirely different matter.
And to be fair, both blacktop asphalt and grey concrete are subject to the same assault of time, temperatures, traffic, and poor maintenance. To use a road is to abuse a road. The weight of vehicles wears down both. Extreme temperatures, both hot and cold, affect both types of materials. Even simple sunshine can break down road material – more so on the darker surface of asphalt than lighter, greyer concrete.
Blacktop asphalt is made up of a stone aggregate mixed with a petroleum byproduct, bitumen, heated and pressed into place over a gravel base such that there are no gaps to, initially, allow in water or air. But over time gaps do develop, allowing in moisture that can ultimately undermine it. Repairing those cracks with crack sealer, or small potholes with blacktop patch material, will prolong the utility of the pavement overall. A stitch in time (i.e., pothole filler) saves nine, as the saying goes.
When concrete bears traffic it stays pretty solid until either the subsurface deteriorates from erosion or the freeze-thaw cycles, sometimes from flooding or excessively heavy loads, or buckling that can come from very warm weather. In the summer of 2021, when triple-digit weather hit the Pacific Northwest for several weeks, the expansion of some concrete slabs on Interstate highway 405 in Tukwila, Washington caused them to pop out of place. Entire sections of those panels had to be removed and replaced with new concrete. The pouring, dry, and set times for that takes hours, often overnight – a lot longer than a filling ruts and potholes in asphalt.
Patching blacktop comes with its own complications. For starters, many municipalities and departments of transportation use a temporary patch material in winter, when a significant portion of potholes form, because the standard asphalt hot mix is likely not available at that time of year (asphalt plants close during winter). The alternatives include a cheap hole filler material, a temporary “cold mix” material that has to be replaced by permanent pothole filler a few months later when temperature warm up. The winter alternative is a polymer modified <a href="https://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/blog/asphalt-crack-filler/">asphalt repair patch mix</a> that can be used in ice, snow, and cold temperatures and still provide a permanent fix.
There isn’t really an equivalent to blacktop patching with a concrete repair material for roadways. In driveways, on sidewalks, with patios, and concrete building foundations epoxy injections are possible. On a highway, the cracks need to go through an arduously sawing, sandblasting, air blasting, installation of a backer rod, and application of a sealant (either a hot, poured elastic material, or silicone).
For the most part, a blacktop asphalt pavement is an uninterrupted ribbon of a smooth ride when in good condition. The seams between concrete slabs nonetheless used on some roads and highways, and on on- and off-ramps, are more jarring to motorists and their passengers. It’s easy to see why asphalt is the preferred material by far.

Why “Blacktop” Asphalt Paving Rules on Public Roadways

No driveway lasts forever. But just like with human health, the wellbeing of asphalt pavement depends on attentive maintenance: resealing, resurfacing, and ultimately repaving.
New homeowners learn a hard lesson, gradually, as the home and its surroundings age and deteriorate. It depends on the components of the house, garage, driveway, and landscaping elements – especially the quality of materials and products – but with time a new roof, new paint, appliance repairs and replacement, driveway asphalt resurfacer, and other parts of the home will need maintenance and replacement.
For example, a good asphalt driveway in most climates will last about a quarter century before it needs a full replacement. But that depends on proper care over those 25 years. It’s similar to how a human body ages better when the person has a good diet, exercises regularly, and tends to medical issues as needed.
Active asphalt maintenance with sealcoating
That asphalt blacktop driveway should look pretty good for about three to five years. It will eventually fade with sun exposure, unfortunately, and there might be deterioration if motor oils drip routinely where a leaky car often parks. Scrubbing those oils will help preserve the pavement by preventing a chemical reaction.
If the pavement was poorly designed or built, or rutted from traffic, rainwater puddles can form in some places. Ideally, the driveway is crowned at the middle and therefore shed water from rain and car washing. But if not, standing water will ultimately find cracks in the pavement itself. That moisture can undermine the pavement.
But assuming the only problem is fading, with no noticeable cracks, a sealcoat can be applied to “freshen up” the driveway.
Resurfacing when asphalt pavement shows more wear
But those cracks will form eventually, the result of time, temperature changes, traffic and settling. They start small, but pay attention to their width (around a quarter inch or more is worrisome) and depth, as well as extent. If the cracks are less than two inches deep, and this affects a third or less of the total driveway, an asphalt resurfacer treatment can be the next smart step in driveway preservation.
Resurfacing means applying a top layer to the existing pavement, assuming the foundation of the pavement is still intact. In more severe cases, the top layer of the existing pavement is scraped off before the new layer is laid in (this is still less intensive than a complete repaving). In either case, it can extend the life of the old asphalt by as much as 15 years.
It’s possible there will be a pothole in a driveway. The do-in-yourself method for filling a pothole would require use of <a href="https://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/case-studies/pothole-repair/louisville-ky-apartment-association/">permanent pothole filler</a>, which are available by the bag in hardware stores.
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When it’s time to repave your asphalt driveway
After a point, the deterioration of a blacktop driveway will be so extensive no amount of sealcoating and resurfacing makes sense. This is when the foundation has faults and needs to be replaced. It will cost more than the previous maintenance measures on a per-square-foot basis – which emphasizes the incentive to do that kind of maintenance over time, starting as early as three years after the pavement is first laid.
Perhaps about 25 years into owning a home is the point at which selling it and moving on to somewhere else is the next logical step. Having a sharp new driveway will contribute to overall curb appeal when selling the home.
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The Life Stages of Asphalt Driveways

Among the many effects of the coronavirus pandemic response is how urban traffic is down sharply. That makes road repairs easier now – but future use and funding are in doubt.
The Road Ecology Center at the University of California, Davis reported on April 16, 2020 that the shelter-in-place order in response to the Covid-19 pandemic has provided an important benefit: the state is saving $40 million per day because of 15,000 fewer collisions per month on the state's roads and highways. Concurrently, 6,000 people per month aren't being injured or killed in accidents since the state issued its lockdown orders on March 20.
How has this affected other states? And how might it translate into spring and summer <a href="https://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/case-studies/seam-repairs/casi-cdot-highway-36-asphalt-seam-repair/">pavement repairs</a>?
The response to the pandemic has largely occurred on a state-by-state basis, making it difficult to assess the national effects. But for the most part, states including New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and California have continued making pothole repairs because they fall under the umbrella of "necessary infrastructure." Some – not all – asphalt plants are open, traffic is much lighter, so in some respects it's an opportunity to make pavement improvements that are typically needed this time of year – faster and with greater efficiency.
The greater problems with infrastructure maintenance and improvements might lie ahead. This work could go underfunded in the very near future due to reduced gas tax revenues. Some points to consider:
• <a href="https://www.consumerreports.org/bikes/bike-riding-safety-during-coronavirus-pandemic/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">ConsumerReports.org</a> also reports that roads are safer overall elsewhere, with collisions in New York City down by 38 percent as of the end of March; injuries were also down, by 32 percent. Interestingly, bike accident injuries were UP by 2.7 percent, mirroring increased use of bicycles, which is not surprising given peoples' reluctance to use public transportation in the face of the pandemic (public transportation revenues have plummeted across the board; $25 billion from the $2 trillion federal stimulus package is designated to make up for revenue losses from Covid 19-related low ridership).
• The Raleigh News & Observer reported (4/2/2020), "with businesses closed and people staying home, North Carolinians are driving less, depriving the state of tens of millions of dollars in fuel taxes used to build and maintain roads." The state's head of its department of transportation says that revenues were cut by about one-third, an expected loss of $200 million by July 1. About 54% of the NCDOT annual budget is from gas taxes.
• The Tax Foundation, an independent, global tax policy nonprofit, reported on March 31 that stay-at-home orders led to decreased personal traffic nationwide by 44 percent in one month's time. Long-haul trucking was down by only 3 percent, but short-haul trucking was down 14 percent.
• The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) anticipates a 30 percent drop in national gas tax revenues, a number modeled in part from data in the 2008-2009 recession.
With depleted revenues, it's hard to see how 2020 will be a banner year for improving roads, bridges, highway exchanges and the like. Pothole repairs appear to be more likely than wholesale repaving.
A check-in with asphalt plants around the US suggests a mixed bag on the supply side, as some are open while others are not. In most cases, the safety of workers is cited, either as a reason for being shuttered or to explain how they are operating – with new protocols that stress social distancing of workers, facility sanitizing, and other containment strategies.
Of note, the National Asphalt Pavement Association has published an online resource to the industry on safety measures and other resources for pavement repair and construction during the pandemic, found <a href="http://www.asphaltpavement.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1319:covid19-keeping-employees-healthy-and-trained&catid=196:uncategorised" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">here</a>.

Covid-19 Traffic Reductions: Pothole Repairs Easier

Are there really new ways to build roads? Well, yes. But whether or not those new ways are feasible is another question.
The actual design, construction and road maintenance systems for roads, streets and highways may appear to be set in stone/asphalt. Indeed, some of the fundamentals of what defines pavement – layers of gravel, rock and sand held together with emulsifiers, plus a sloping surface to rid the road of precipitation – are remarkably similar since the days of the Roman Empire and its many roads.
But the exigencies of the modern economy and of public safety, as well as the costs associated with building and repairing roads, call for something better. It’s clear that the tab for building new roads is high: According to the American Road &#038; Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA), construction of a new four-lane highway can range from $4 million per mile in rural areas to $10 million per mile in urban areas. Further, ARTBA says that American taxpayers spend more repairing and maintaining existing roads and bridges than building new – more than $135 billion on federal, state and local roads per year, an amount considered inadequate for addressing the poor conditions of existing infrastructure.
So what are the current innovations driving toward smarter, longer-lasting asphalt? What can make our tax dollars stretch further? How can our roads be safer, and less likely to inflict damage to our cars, trucks, and buses?
The National Center for Asphalt Technology (NCAT) at Auburn University has been working on asphalt R&#038;D since 1986. Working with the Federal Highway Administration and state-level highway agencies, as well as private-sector construction companies, NCAT develops and evaluates new products, new design technologies, as well as construction methods that lead to better pavement. 
It’s important to note that not all innovation is something visible to the eye or leading to revolutionary changes. The technical variables in road building are indeed exciting, even if some of the innovations are something only a civil engineer could appreciate. A running list of links to research reports from NCAT can be found <a href="https://eng.auburn.edu/research/centers/ncat/info-pubs/technical-reports.html">here</a> 
Meanwhile, Engineering &#038; Technology magazine has done a pretty good job of reporting on asphalt innovation that the average motorist can relate to. Looking at new ways of building roads, it provides a summary of four new technologies that are in various stages of R&#038;D:
Plastic waste replacing bitumen: A Scottish firm, MacRebur, is developing an asphalt mix that uses pellets and flakes sourced from household plastic waste to replace a portion of the petroleum-based binder (bitumen) used in asphalt. Developers report that while oil-based bitumen isn’t entirely eliminated from the process, it provides a double benefit by finding a reuse for plastic waste while reducing dependency on oil for road building and associated greenhouse gases. Importantly, it introduces no new requirements in the manufacturing and application processes. The company built its first American plastic-mix road on the University of California San Diego campus, and is soon to open a plant nearby to make and sell the mix to California builders.
Waste plastic modular road components: Prefabricated and hollow road sections made of recycled plastic are another approach to using waste to build pavement. The aptly named PlasticRoad company, based in The Netherlands, includes a cavity separating the top (surface) and lower sides of the modular sections that can be used for drainage, utilities (pipes and cables), and heating elements to melt winter ice. The first installation in 2018 is a bike path in Zwolle, NL with future plans for vehicular roads and airport runways. 
Paper manufacturing lignin: Plastic isn’t the only waste material being tested as a road-building material. A by-product of paper manufacturing, lignin, can entirely replace bitumen in road building. The material is under test at Wageningen University, also in the Netherlands. One stumbling block: Lignin is currently expensive and therefore offers no economic advantage over petroleum-based materials. 
Bio-bitumen: Not satisfied with just plastic waste, researchers at Aston University (Birmingham UK) are looking at the full stream of household garbage to create a bitumen substitute. It uses plastic along with paper, textiles, and organic materials that is ground and heated (500 degrees Celsius) into a dark goop. The Birmingham Council is looking at testing it on local roads.
Because all of these newer technologies are not yet proven, we cannot say they will be pothole-free in a decade or two. Suffice it to say we will be keeping an eye on how things develop – and perhaps stay intact – from here.

New Ways to Build Roads?

The conference itself, held in Indianapolis, achieved its goals. But attendees noticed something before they got to the convention center: Lots of potholes.
Every two years the asphalt industry gathers for the “World of Asphalt Show &amp; Conference,” a confab of more than 450 of the paving industry’s leading manufacturers and service providers. The convention is always held in a North American city, providing a chance for people in the paving industry to dedicate a few days of the industry’s off-season to education and commerce.
The 2019 show was in Indianapolis in mid-February, a mere two weeks following the outbreak of deep freeze temperatures in the Midwest region. The lowest temperature in Indy on January 31 was -11ºF, which was not as bad as Chicago (-23ºF), Minneapolis (-28ºF), Fargo (-33ºF) or Detroit (-13ºF), but bad enough. Freeze-thaw cycles are perhaps the unkindest conditions for cracked pavement, resulting in potholes, but very low temperatures don’t help much.
So when a <a href="https://www.wishtv.com/news/local-news/rough-roads-lead-to-world-of-asphalt-event-in-downtown-indy/1776535310">reporter from WISH-TV</a> in Indianapolis visited the asphalt gathering, he naturally had potholes on his mind. “The roads leading to our convention center are rough,” said Richard Essex, the reporter. “The irony of this event being held in Indianapolis in the peak of pothole season wasn’t lost on anyone.”
Among the show attendees were purveyors of specialty asphalt products, including Tom Francione, a Floridian who works for Miami-based EZ Street Asphalt. Somewhat taken aback by the conditions of the roads between the airport and the downtown convention center, he noted it wasn’t just an Indy problem. “One of my customers drove up from Louisville today and he says he’s never seen it this bad,” he said.
EZ Street produces a polymer-modified high-performance asphalt guaranteed to permanently repair potholes, utility cuts, overlays and edge irregularities in asphalt or concrete. The industry show happens to be scheduled when most asphalt plants are closed because air temperatures should be above 50ºF for the bituminous mix (which is between 220ºF and 290ºF) to set properly. But EZ Street is a cold asphalt product that can be used in cold and wet conditions – precisely when potholes are most numerous.
Chris Botner of Unique Paving Materials, another asphalt maker that specializes in pothole repair, echoed Francione’s comments. “They’re in pretty bad shape,” he said.
Three days of educational sessions focused on asphalt plant performance, pavement techniques, pavement preservation (i.e., preventing potholes), and tools for achieving environmental, health, safety, and sustainability goals.
The road to Indianapolis might be rough, but with a centuries-old industry still working at improving products and methods, things might smooth out eventually. The 2021 conference will be held in Atlanta.

World of Asphalt Conference Had Rough Patches

The difference between temporary and permanent pothole repairs illustrates how there are different kinds of asphalt. So why not fix potholes right the first time?
We tend to think of road pavement, most of which is asphalt (some is concrete), as generic. In fact it’s not. And that’s why most municipalities dealing with winter potholes use a type of temporary pothole filler. Come spring and summer, road crews return with “permanent asphalt” to do permanent fixes.
Which begs some obvious questions: Why fix something twice? Does that not double the work and double the materials used? And double the costs?
The answer is in the nature of asphalt formulations – there are many – and how winter weather makes road repairs difficult all around. That said, there are newer types of asphalt and methods that overcome the challenges of ice, snow and cold temperatures – fixing roads faster and probably reducing overall costs (there are several variables). This gives motorists and taxpayers something to cheer.
To understand why there is this pothole repair two-step, it helps to look at the different formulations for the binder – which in the trade is referred to as “asphalt cement,” the black gooey stuff that the holds the rocks and sand (“aggregate”) together. And even the aggregate itself can vary from region to region, affecting the binder. Most binder is hot-mix asphalt (HMAs), but there are also cold-mix asphalts (CMAs). The use of each roughly corresponds with the seasonal temperatures: HMA in summer, CMA in winter.
To achieve a more resilient, permanent asphalt road, the all-important physical task in this process is compaction. A mix laid down into a pothole, for example, will be more permanent if the air between the aggregate and binder is minimized (7% air voids or less). Rolling a heavy truck tire or rollers over newly laid asphalt, or by way of hand-held tampers, is the primary means for achieving that compaction.
But it’s not solely dependent on the brute force of pressing the asphalt together. With hot-mix asphalt, that compaction has to be done while it’s still hot. If the mix has cooled before compaction, as will happen in colder weather, there will be more air voids. Which is why permanent pothole repairs are generally done in warmer weather. It’s not only difficult to keep the asphalt mix hot after leaving the asphalt plant, in many markets where winter is long and cold the asphalt plants simply cease operations during winter.
This is why most potholes get a temporary, loose aggregate of cold mix asphalt. In some cases, the road maintenance crew fixes potholes with a simple “throw and go” treatment. There may be a small amount of compaction achieved with the back side of a shovel, but the first cars and trucks to run over relatively loose piles of asphalt filler are the primary method to tamp down the mix. But that same traffic is also what leads to further deterioration in a relatively short time. The net result is potholes return quite quickly – within days or weeks.
There are better quality cold mix asphalt formulations available. They typically cost more, but the savings come from a single, versus double, pothole repair. This is why one city might have better roads than another nearby.
Also confounding wintertime pothole repairs is the presence of ice or water in potholes. Even hot mix asphalt shouldn’t be laid in wet conditions. But some of the <a href="https://www.pothole.info/2018/01/permanent-pothole-repair-in-cold-and-water/">newer cold mix variations</a> can be placed and compacted in water, a significant advantage in winter conditions.
So it is possible to permanently repair potholes with a single treatment in winter months. Unfortunately, that’s not yet how most cities and states currently do it. So temporary fixes in winter are still pretty much the rule, with permanent repairs usually done several months – and many flat tires – later.

Repair & Materials