Colorado Springs on pace for second straight year of 100,000 potholes

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- Despite nearly five years of expanded street and road paving from the voter-approved 2C sales tax increase, the number of potholes remains high.

After reaching a record of 106,000 last year, city officials say they're on pace to surpass 100,000 again this year. Year-to-date, the city has filled 64,000 potholes.

But officials say the trend should be viewed as more of a positive than a negative, because the high counts mean that crews are finding and repairing more potholes than ever before.

Also, the city says the 2C tax, which will generate $250 million in revenue between 2016 and 2020, has allowed officials to allocate more funding for road and street maintenance.

Furthermore, the city is catching up on decades of neglect in roadway maintenance, and crews are repairing more potholes after changing their strategy several years ago to be more proactive -- repairing potholes as crews see them, not just when drivers report them, and prioritizing potholes on major routes.

One of the city's paving priorities this year was to finish applying a new layer of asphalt to Garden of the Gods Road, a source of many past pothole complaints.

Crews filled 64,000 potholes in the first year of 2C. The total jumped to 90,000 in 2017 and decreased to nearly 88,000 in 2018.

The city says the desired annual number of potholes should be around 60,000, and more will be eliminated since voters approved extending 2C through 2025 at a slightly lower tax rate.

Officials say it's important to remember that even after both 2C projects, only a third of the city's streets and roads will have been upgraded. Crews expect both projects to repave nearly 2,000 lane miles by the end of 2025.

"Our road network is more extensive than Denver's," said Corey Farkas, the city's public works operations and maintenance manager. " It is getting better. We're just able to reach more because those resources are becoming freed up. We're actually able to respond to more potholes than we ever have."

To learn more about how to report potholes in Colorado Springs, visit: https://coloradosprings.gov/reportpothole.