Spend 20 minutes watching TV news and you’d think the biggest transportation problem today is the auto industry. Bailouts, bankruptcies and acquisitions by foreign companies command the lion’s share of media attention – enough so that we forget about another very expensive transportation problem affecting virtually every driver in the country.
That problem is potholes. We see them in the dead of winter in northern towns, but also in semi-tropical cities like Miami and Honolulu. We drive like NASCAR professionals to avoid hitting them and mostly succeed – until we don’t, and end up with flat tires or worse. Come spring and summer we curse them if they are still there, unfilled, almost as much as we yell during traffic tie-ups due to road repair work.
Conspiracy theories are abundant in the blogosphere, suggesting a linkage between municipalities and the auto repair industry (however, none of that is supported by the evidence). But along with those other certainties of life, death and taxes, it seems that potholes are a universal experience. Frustration and dollars add up.
But all is not lost – improvements are on the way. Tire and auto dealers provide online advice to drivers on how to manage their way through pothole season. Municipalities test alternatives to road salt, which can corrode reinforcement bars in roads and bridges. And engineers are devising new methods for pothole and road repair, making pothole fillers last longer and street construction sturdier.
A grim accounting
And in case you know anyone at the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) or TRIP, a national transportation research group, don’t invite him or her to your next backyard barbecue. The conversation could not be cheerful. In their seminal report, Rough Roads Ahead, Fix Them Now or Pay for It Later, it appears as if we’re due for a few tire blowouts and much worse in taxes in the future. Here are some of their findings:
<ul type="disc">
<li>As much as 20 percent of the Interstate Highway System is rated mediocre or poor.</li>
<li>Forty percent of rural roads are in less-than good condition.</li>
<li>Sixty percent of urban roads are in poor condition.</li>
<li>Drivers themselves spend an average $335 per year in vehicle operating costs, with those costs a much higher $746 per year in certain urban areas where repairs are more frequent and more expensive.</li>
</ul>
The report notes that $27 billion dollars are designated by Congress in the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 (the “stimulus bill”) to go to highway projects. But AASHTO’s research also shows that an investment of $166 billion needs to be spent each year in highways and bridges. That’s a trillion dollars on road infrastructure alone in the next six years.
Rough Roads Ahead also provides a few cautionary tales. One is that a road allowed to deteriorate over 25 years will cost three times more to repair than a road that was maintained over the same number of years. Traffic growth of 41 percent from 1990 through 2007 exceeds population growth, which shows no sign of abating any time soon. While the bulk of this traffic is in urban areas, freight truck traffic on the 50-year old Interstate highway system carries 80 percent of the freight tonnage moving across the country – that’s 10,500 trucks per day crossing every mile of the system. Recession-strapped state coffers fall short of simply maintaining the poor levels of roads they have currently – stimulus funds will only bring them back to parity, at best, with better economic times.
This should hardly be a point of controversy. Potholes cost everyone money. Preventing potholes saves money. An ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure. So why aren’t potholes being fixed in a timelier fashion?
With all due credit, most municipalities are doing the best they can. They get the phone calls, see the television news “pothole cam” reporting, and hear about it from taxpayer organizations. They truly want solutions, and strive to find new ways of doing things, but resources are limited, more so under adverse weather conditions. We could hardly blame them if they also pray for a mild winter.
Throw-and-go pothole fillers that last?
Traditionally, the pockmarked streets find their easiest and cheapest fix with application of hot-mix asphalt, administered from slow-moving trucks by municipal employees who are greeted as heroes in most neighborhoods. But everyone knows how these fixes deteriorate over time – pothole filler can work loose or settles deeper than intact pavement in just a few weeks. An ordinary avenue in places like Cleveland, Wichita, Miami or Los Angeles can be worthy of an SUV television ad – lots of jarring bumps, as challenging as an off-road trail in the Sierra Nevadas.
Newer approaches to pothole repair show promise of creating something better. Some technologies work longer – they hold the hole, so to speak, for longer lengths of time – and some even offer “green” advantages over traditional hot-mix approaches.
<blockquote>I did the math. If it cost $10 to patch a pothole one time, and I had to patch 12 times a year, then $20 or $30 to patch it once a year would save me both labor time and material costs. Using this product we are able to do a better utility cut and do it faster.</blockquote>
Several state departments of transportation have begun using permanent cold asphalt mix, which employ polymer-modified technology to guarantee a more permanent pothole repair. The mix provides several benefits in both application and long term wear:
<ul type="disc">
<li>Instant “throw and go” readiness for traffic – road crews tamp it down and cars can traverse it seconds later.</li>
<li>Can be applied in all weather conditions – no waiting for warmer or cooler temperatures.</li>
<li>Can be applied in water, including those “hidden” potholes that look like mere puddles to unsuspecting drivers.</li>
<li>No special mixing required, nor do the potholes need extensive preparation other than clearing loose debris – this means road repair crews can cover more territory in less time.</li>
</ul>
Use of cold-mix asphalt began long ago and is finding fans. Some DOT chiefs have gone on record about the use and economics of this newer cold-mix technology:
<ul type="disc">
<li>Millersville, Tennessee: “I did the math. If it cost $10 to patch a pothole one time, and I had to patch 12 times a year, then $20 or $30 to patch it once a year would save me both labor time and material costs. Using this product we are able to do a better utility cut and do it faster.”</li>
<li>Hialeah, Florida: [Cold asphalt] is easier to apply with hand tools for small patch jobs, and we do not have to go back and revisit potholes like before. For larger patches it is easily applied with a backhoe loader bucket and it does not stick to our equipment, truck beds or hand tools, making cleanup much easier. The benefits…in our utility patching clearly outweigh the incremental cost for it.”</li>
<li>Somers (Westchester County) New York: “We have used cold asphalt with the hopes of just getting us through the winter until we can replace with hot asphalt after the weather turns warmer. [Now] I know that I will not have to take the time to go back to the spots that we repaired in the winter. This is saving our town time and money.”</li>
</ul>
Summoning their inner Mario Andretti
Individual drivers are conducting their own independent efforts, with the help of the auto industry, to fight back as well. An association of Honda dealerships in the New York City area provides this defensive driving advice to customers on their <a href="http://www.nylihonda.com/servicemyhonda_tire.asp">website</a>:
<ul>
<li>Hitting a pothole can throw your car’s front end out of alignment. If you feel your car “pulling” as you drive, you could have a problem. Check the tread on your tires. If you find uneven treadwear, it could be a sign of misalignment. If you hit a severe pothole, have a tire dealer check your vehicle’s alignment and tire balance.</li>
<li>Damage to your tire and/or the metal wheel of your vehicle can occur when you hit a pothole. Keeping your tires properly inflated helps reduce damage from potholes and other road hazards.</li>
<li>The impact of potholes on tires increases dramatically depending on the speed at which your vehicle travels. This can cause hidden, internal damage that could lead to tire failure weeks, or even months, later. For these reasons, it is best to avoid potholes entirely. If that’s not possible, avoid braking during pothole impact. Instead, apply your brakes before hitting a pothole and release them just prior to impact. (Braking during impact sets up the tire and wheel assembly for a “solid hit” against the edge of the hole. Less severe damage occurs when a tire rolls over a pothole than when it skids during braking.)</li>
</ul>
Taking matters into their own hands, here is a sampling of advice from one <a href="http://www.golfmkv.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1633427">blog</a> site, dedicated to drivers of the VW Golf GTI, on avoiding flat tires from potholes:
Subject line: Pothole resistant tires
I’ve only had my ’09 GTI 4-door for about a month (maybe less) and I’ve already blown out a tire on a pothole (I hit it avoiding another one at night in wet roads). I love my 18″, but New Jersey is riddled with potholes and I’m a little nervous about how many more times I’m going to have to deal with NOT having it covered under roadside assistance and having to change my tire in the mud. Obviously if I were stronger and able to hold the tire in place while I put it back on, it wouldn’t be a big deal. :p but there aren’t even bolts to stick out and mount the tire on. So cheap. My question is, are there any tires out there that are thicker and more durable in the face of potholes for an 18″ wheel?
Responding to that, a thread of several dozen respondents covered the pros and cons of over-inflation of tires, either to create greater flat resilience (at the expense of ride comfort) or to enable sharper, more agile cornering so the driver can avoid potholes altogether. If they were Honda drivers on Long Island, they’d know the answer to this question. Clearly, it’s a hot topic, and the solutions might be as varied as the country’s different drivers and vehicles.
So there you have it. Potholes are a big, fat problem. They’re ubiquitous and inevitable. Minimizing damage and costs associated with those damages will not come with a one-fix silver bullet. It’s a matter of timely funding, spending those funds smartly, innovation – and knowing how to drive.

Hate the pothole. Love the filler.

1. A general overview of pavement preservation and the role of Superpave/newer technologies in accomplishing that in a cost-effective (over time) manner.
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Save the Road, Save Some Money
A crisis of road deterioration is challenging federal, state and local budgets. Better road preservation methods are being devised, fortunately, offering improved highway maintenance economics.
It's pretty hard to tally the complete value of working highways and roads in America. The country's approximately four million miles of pavement connect not only cities, towns and villages, but manufacturing plants, warehouses, freight stations and ports. Goods from abroad as well as USA-made products move around the country on rivers of asphalt, keeping our $200 trillion economy chugging along.
The six-day closure of the San Francisco Bay Bridge, in late October 2009, diverted 228,000 cars from their normal daily commute. As an alternative, a portion of the workforce remained functional by telecommuting. Some commuters drove north to the Golden Gate Bridge, while others south to the Haywood-San Mateo span – no doubt confounding motorists who routinely use those spans. BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, reported its biggest day in history with 437,000 thousand taking the train one day of the shut down. Reportedly, no one was happy.
All this because of a broken cable that protected a cracked beam. Elsewhere, there are many, many more things that can get in the way of smooth transportation. Most dramatically, the collapse of Minneapolis' I35W Bridge in 2007, where 13 people lost their lives (and the region reportedly lost $400,000 in commercial traffic every day), was due to a sudden infrastructure breakdown. But drive around almost any city in America, coast to coast, Canada to Mexico with Hawaii and Alaska counted as well, and you're likely to see the bane of all driving: potholes.
Potholes have been around since the Romans were building roads all over their empire. But modern roads are getting worse lately: the U.S. federal highway system was initiated a little more than fifty years ago by the Eisenhower Administration and 46,876 miles of the Interstate Highway System were built over the next several decades, designed to last about fifty years. This is a ticking time bomb.
To put numbers to these worries, highway and transportation watchdog groups weigh in on what they see happening in road deterioration:
<ul>
<li>TRIP, a national transportation research organization, claims that 23 percent of major U.S. metropolitan roads have pavements in poor condition. Included in this are interstates, freeways and important local roads.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) says that only half of these roads can be categorized as being in good condition.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>FHWA says that rural roads are in better condition, but still 39 percent fail to meet "good condition" ratings.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>FHWA says that 25 percent of urban roads – those that carry most of the nation's traffic – are in poor condition.</li>
</ul>
<ul type="disc">
<li>TRIP also reports that on average, urban motorists suffer $413 in additional vehicle operating costs resulting from increased fuel consumption, additional maintenance and vehicle deterioration due to rough pavement.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The TRIP report also details city-by-city road deterioration statistics. Los Angeles has the dubious distinction of being the worst, with 64 percent of its major roads in poor condition. Almost as bad, in descending order, are San Francisco-Oakland (61 percent); Honolulu (61 percent); San Jose (60 percent); San Diego (53 percent); New Orleans (50 percent); New York City (49 percent); Sacramento (46 percent); Baltimore (42 percent); Oklahoma City (41 percent); Tulsa (40 percent); Albuquerque (39 percent); Omaha (38 percent); San Antonio (37 percent); Philadelphia (36 percent); Detroit (36 percent); Riverside-San Bernardino (35 percent); Oxnard-Ventura (35 percent); Houston (33 percent); Fresno (30 percent); and Washington, DC (30 percent).</li>
</ul>
FHWA attributes deteriorating roads to aging of pavement, unrelenting traffic and trucks carrying heavy loads of freight.
<blockquote>Road conditions actually improved from 2000 to 2006, but began to decline again in 2007. What happened? FHWA says this is due to under-funded maintenance and deferred new construction, all tied to tighter budgets.</blockquote>
Things were getting better, but … 
Road conditions actually improved from 2000 to 2006, but began to decline again in 2007. What happened? FHWA says this is due to under-funded maintenance and deferred new construction, all tied to tighter budgets.
The troubling economics of deferred road repair today is that it increases costs tomorrow. According to an article in Better Roads magazine (March 2009), "A pothole is like a tooth cavity. Left untreated it gets more decayed, more painful, takes more time and money to care for, and sometimes you end up having to urgently call in a specialist."
The pain (cost) happens in both micro and macro terms:
<ul>
<li>The individual driver traversing a rough road will suffer vehicle damage, such as blown tires, cracked wheels and axels, and broken shock absorbers and struts, which dangerously alters steering and handling. That can be around $100 per tire and up to $500 per wheel if it is damaged also. TRIP reports that on average, American motorists shell out $335 in additional vehicle operating costs due to rough pavement, with drivers in several cities (Los Angeles, San Jose, San Francisco-Oakland and Tulsa) absorbing more than $700 per car in such repairs each year.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Municipalities, states and the federal government pay more for replacing roads than if they instead maintain existing roads over time. The U.S. Department of Transportation/Federal Highway Administration, in its 2005 report At the Crossroads: Preserving Our Highway Investment, state clearly that "Higher quality investments earlier in the life of the road will save money over the long run because maintaining a road in good condition is less expensive than repairing or rebuilding one in poor condition."</li>
</ul>
Yet the money runs short. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), in a joint report compiled with TRIP titled Rough Roads Ahead, Fix Them Now or Pay For Them Later, projects the national annual outlay for all capital investments in infrastructure, highways and bridges, should be $166 billion, each year through 2015. This far outstrips current spending, which in 2006 was only $78 billion.
In a recession, tax revenues naturally drop. Traffic does too, which reduces some road damage from cars and trucks. But rain, snow and freeze-thaw cycles continue unabated. Potholes are as certain as death and taxes.
Superpave technology to the rescue 
Yankee ingenuity abhors a vacuum (and if you've driven around Boston lately, it is easy to see why). There are better roads ahead if we can just migrate to new methods and materials.
We're already on our way there. A project authorized by Congress in the late 1980s, the Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP), has successfully developed and evaluated technologies and techniques to combat the problems with our roads. Costs for the program were shared with state transportation departments, while the actual research was conducted under contract with universities and private companies.
SHRP studied asphalt, concrete, highway operations maintenance and safety and long-term pavement performance. More than 100 products were developed in the six years of the program, which have been showcased and shared with the highway building and maintenance community (including through the FHWA-sponsored National Asphalt Training Center, based in Lexington, Kentucky).
The highest-performing products to come out of this research are collectively known as the Superpave® program. This broadly is made up of three components: asphalt binder specifications, a design and analysis system that is based on volumetric properties of the asphalt mix, and models for mix-analysis tests and performance prediction. Of course part of the research outcomes were products that fit different climate and traffic conditions.
For example, in asphalt binders, the traditional material is a hot mix of petroleum joined with a specified grade of aggregate. Produced hot from the plant, it is put in trucks for use by road crews to either repave a road or fill in potholes. Because it has to be applied while still warm, all kinds of inefficiencies are intrinsic to its use.
Cold mix technologies, however, eliminate the logistics problems associated with hot mix applications. This frees up more road crews to actually fix potholes, for example, rather than wait in line at a processing plant for that day's mix. When a truckload is half empty at the end of a day, it can simply be rolled to the next day. The material is adaptive to a broad range of temperatures.
Of greater importance is how Superpave products perform. One brand in wide distribution is <a href="http://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/">EZ Street Cold Asphalt</a>, which uses a low molecular weight liquid polymer modifier, also known as a reactive aggregate insertion polymer. It's particularly good at resisting water, the enemy of all asphalt paving. Its adhesion and cohesion properties also contribute to its performance over time. Application of the mix requires no special equipment or methodologies, just a dump truck, plate compactor, asphalt rake and shovels. When necessary, it can be a throw-and-go process, pressed into water-filled potholes and driven on moments after installation.
The director of public works in Millersville, Tennessee remarked in Tennessee Public Works (January/February 2002) that <a href="http://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/">EZ Street</a> enabled his crews to work with greater efficiency in patching potholes than with hot mix, and that it held up to traffic ten to 12 longer than traditional hot mix. The mix also cut down his labor needs considerably.
The Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) has conducted macroeconomic analysis of the benefits of SHRP products and Superpave technologies. Very conservative estimates on service life extensions of roadways project a $1.3 billion to $2.1 billion in savings per year to motorists in reduced auto maintenance, wear and tear, plus a reduction in highway agency costs that range from $484 million to $785 million annually.
Superpave methods and materials generally cost more upfront, which makes them difficult to rationalize in a tight economy. But American commerce and culture show no sign of reducing their dependence on roads, telling us these new and improved methods can't come into use soon enough.

Repair & Materials

Hate the pothole. Love the filler.

Save The Road, Save Some Money