Pothole questions answered in Colorado Springs
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- KRDO 13's The Road Warrior is digging deeper into last week's paving and pothole briefing by city officials.
A group that involved the city's current mayor, previous mayor, City Council president and top public works staffers responded to public criticism about potholes -- which, even after eight years of the 2C voter-approved tax for expanded paving -- are trending toward a third year of 100,000 repairs.
The following are answers to the most common questions asked by KRDO 13 viewers.
WHY DO WE RARELY SEE A POTHOLE CREW WORKING, WHEN THERE ARE SO MANY POTHOLES? AND WHY DOES IT TAKE SO LONG TO GET THEM PATCHED?
"We have the largest municipal infrastructure in the state of Colorado," said Corey Farkas, the city's public works operations and maintenance manager. "If you took our lane miles and placed them end-to-end, we'd go from the Colorado Springs Airport all the way to Athens, Greece. If you were to take pothole trucks and sprinkle them on that road, there's a really good chance that you would go a long time without seeing a truck."
WHY CAN'T THE CITY CREATE MORE POTHOLE CREWS TO SUPPLEMENT THE CURRENT 6 TO 8 DAILY CREWS?
"We've got a lot of maintenance to do out there, so we're trying to balance filling potholes with sealing cracks, preventive maintenance and doing all of that," Farkas explained. "Not to mention that pothole trucks are very expensive. The capital outlay for a pothole truck, you're looking at upwards of $300,000."
HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO FIX A POTHOLE?
"It depends," he said. "We have two methods of filling potholes. We have a pothole fill, and a pothole repair. The pothole fill is an old throw-and-go method (using cold-mix asphalt) that a lot of places use specifically. Actually, this time of year, we're coming out of winter again and with all the moisture that we've seen, the potholes run rampant and we will see a decline in the number of potholes as we get drier through the summer, provided we don't have a rainy summer. And so, this time of year -- coming out of winter -- the throw-and-go method is where we're trying to fill as many potholes as we can, and make that road safe and passable. We don't expect that to last a long time. With the pothole repair, they're going to go ahead and take a jackhammer. They'll square out that hole, fix any compromises (area) that's underneath, compact it. They'll tack the sides with tack and they'll put hot mix asphalt in that hole and compact it. And that's the repair method. That's the method that's going to stick around the longest."
WHY DO WE STILL HAVE SO MANY POTHOLES AFTER 8 YEARS OF 2C?
To answer this question, we turn to John Suthers, who served two previous terms as mayor and authored 2C when he ran for his first term in 2015.
"In the early 1990s, the city eliminated a one-half-cent infrastructure tax that had been enacted to keep up with the pace of the growth of the community and our infrastructure demands," he said. "And for the next two decades, we grossly underfunded road maintenance in Colorado Springs and the city was continuing to grow, and we were improving a very, very small fraction of our roads every year. And as Corey says, (we) have this climate that if you don't continually do road improvements, they just deteriorate at an accelerating rate."
Suthers said that thanks to 2C, the percentage of streets in poor condition has decreased from 75% to 50%.
"And we were trending down in 2015," he recalled. "Now, we're trending up."
Officials insist that doing more paving is the best way to significantly reduce potholes, which is why they will ask voters in November to renew 2C -- for a second time -- over ten years after the current renewal expires at the end of next year.
