Pothole repairs gear up in Colorado Springs area ahead of next round of snow, cold
EL PASO COUNTY, Colo. (KRDO) -- The arrival of spring hasn't ended the possibility of snow and below-freezing temperatures this week, and it has local road and street crews scrambling to fill potholes in advance of the wintry weather.
On Monday, an El Paso County Highway Department crew filled numerous potholes on Siferd Boulevard, near the intersection of Academy Boulevard and Austin Bluffs Parkway.
The area is well known for being one of the area's worst for flash flooding from a near by drainage channel, and years of flooding may have contributed to the the road's deteriorating condition.
A county official said that pothole repairs in the area are particularly challenging because it is a sliver of county jurisdiction surrounded by the Colorado Springs city limits.
"It's just another place where we have to respond to complaints, and it takes longer because of limited resources," said Kevin Mastin, the county's deputy public works director. "I'm still trying to fill 30 openings in my department."
Neighbors said that they're glad to see the pothole work but remain dissatisfied about the condition of the road.
"Just have the road paved, because this is ridiculous," said Michael Boling. "You're going through chuckholes that are sometimes 3 feet deep, that you can't get around because the road's narrow."
Siferd Boulevard is also a busy shortcut for traffic traveling between an adjacent residential neighborhood and two of the cit's busiest streets in the middle of town.
Another neighbor, Gerard Lopez, said a repair crew came only after he wrote a letter to a county commissioner last week.
"It seems like the potholes here are worse this year," he said. "A lot of them popped up after that big snowfall we got a month ago. But they're just a band-aid to the real problem here. The city or county needs to improve the drainage here, rebuild the road, or both."
Mastin said that the city and county are working on a long-term solution for the area, but the county still has no more than two crews devoted to pothole filling -- compared to eight crews in the city.
On Monday night, Colorado Department of Transportation crews begin overnight pothole repairs on Interstate 25, U.S. 24 and U.S. 85/87 in the Colorado Springs area.
To report a pothole in unincorporated El Paso County, visit: http://citizenconnect.elpasoco.com.
To report a pothole in Colorado Springs, call 1-719-385-ROAD or visit: https://coloradosprings.gov/reportpothole.
To report a pothole on a highway or other CDOT jurisdiction, call 1-719-562-5568.
