Transportation

Do the potholes seem worse than usual this year?

Eric Ringham Feb 23, 2010
18

Severe cold cracks pavements. Moisture seeps in and expands when it freezes. The ice displaces pavement, more moisture seeps in, the cycle repeats and a pothole is born. Do the potholes seem worse than usual this year?

We’d like to know about the worst potholes you encounter. Check out our new pothole map.

  • Dmox

    Those are potholes? I thought perhaps we’d decided to add another 10,000 lakes….

  • Rich

    Yes, the potholes are the worst I have ever seen in 30 years of living in this state. They seem to get worse every year Tim Pawlenty is in office, who seems to fix budget holes by allowing infrastructure to crumble and leaving an expensive mess for his successor. I have taken to calling them Pawlenty-holes. Having already replaced my front axels, wheel bearings and boots this year I think a 5 or 10 cent gas tax would have been much less painful. If only anyone in our government was strong enough to lead on that.

  • garyf

    Kinda funny, on I-94 the cars were three wide and all shifting backing and forth like NASCAR drivers breaking in their tires.

    My feeling is that local municipalities will not fix them very fast to make people suffer while the state decides local government aid.

  • beryl k gullsgate

    One of the larger potholes in my village was spotted by local Chamber of Commerce activists and in-their-pocket developers who applied and will soon receive stimulus funds for waterfront development.

    A couple new breweries are part of the new expansion…talk about recyling muddy waters?

    No, no mud in your eye here. Just stout-hearted brews…swallow that one eh?

  • Amy

    Yes. I hate potholes!! It is so bad in some places, I feel like my car is just going to break apart. Its not like we can safely swerve to avoid them either while traveling 55 mph down the highway. Its aweful, makes me wonder if anyone has ever sued the state for damages. Also makes me wonder where the money from the gas tax hike a few years ago is going? certainly not to road maintenence like it was supposed to be. I have to agree with someone who posted earlier and start calling them Pawlenty-holes.

  • Westendorp

    Yes, they are terrible and getting worse. Despite your report that crews are working on poor roads I have yet to see evidence of this myself. I drive Minnetonka Blvd west from the Twin Cities and there are deep ruts in across the road just before the 169 underpass. I typically use this route for bike commuting and shudder to think of how dangerous it will be in a month or two, if repairs are not made.

  • Steven

    A year or so ago I experienced something I never had before. Driving west on a state highway, as I crossed into South Dakota, the road suddenly got much better. The ineptitude of our state government was glaringly obvious.

  • LSKUP

    I’ve lived here for 30 years, too, and I have never remembered such a bad year for pot holes, either! I recently experienced a flat tire because I hit one of the “beauties” on Broadway Ave. near 280. I’m not traveling that road (one that is most convenient for me) again, until I’m sure it has been fixed. I like the idea of calling them Pawlenty holes. too. I’m sure the roads out in his outer ring suburb are as smooth as his political rhetoric.

  • Bill A

    I honestly have to say no. We have forgotten what it’s like to drive on roads durring a propper Minnesota winter. We have had several mild winters (weather wise) recently. So that’s why we think the roads are worse IMO.

    Besides does nobody remember Lake ST. from ten years ago? It was a bone shaker even in the SUMMER!

  • Amy

    It is so bad, I have considered how I can prove in a court of law that the foreseeable damage to my new car is the fault of the entity that didn’t repair the pothole….think I’ll bring a camera in the car!

  • Joe

    I went to a movie a couple weeks ago downtown and the girl I was with told me to avoid the Hennepin Lyndale area because of the potholes. I thought she was probably somewhat exagerating but on the way back I managed to wind up on Lyndale. The potholes were probably closer to sinkholes and I think a car next to me broke something in the suspension as they headed kind of abrupty to the side of the road. I got lucky and made it through. I notice also cross the border to a neighboring state and the roads are better. I to would pay a little more for gas to prevent damage to the car.

  • James

    Global warming….. aah cooling…. climate change… no wait Republicans are making it worse.

  • Sue de Nim

    Not all Republicans, just the ones who stick to unreasonable “No New Taxes” pledges in order to boost their standing with the national right-wing base.

  • Steve

    Up north here in Virginia, MN it’s not so much the pot holes, but the ice that built up a month ago from a rain/snow storm. It hasn’t been cleared away, and has created many pot-hole-like portions on the road, as well as horrible rutting and dangerous intersections. But on a whole, I’d say there are a few more holes that have developed, and probably will stick around until this summer when a crew can get out and deal with them properly…until then, just look out for the ones that will swallow your car whole.

  • Greg

    My car breaths a sigh of relief when crossing over the state line to Wisconsin! I would much rather pay an extra dime or quarter a gallon for gas than to need major car work.

  • Gordon in Two Harbors

    Yeah, potholes are pretty bad this year, but I can’t remember a winter when they weren’t. If there are indeed more disintigrating roads, then I would suggest that the problem is that too much emphasis (money) has been put into building new roads into the outer Twin Cities to encourage/enable sprawl, instead of maintaining the road infrastructure that already exists.

  • Joy Svoboda

    Yes! They are worse across the region, not just on heavily traveled highways and city streets. Remove county roads are equally impacted this year.

  • Jenny

    We had a pot hole on the road I had to take to leave my workplace. They filled it with golfball-sized rocks so we not only had to worry about the stupid pothole but we also had rocks rolling around all over the road and spurting up under braking tires. Who puts golfballs in a hole? Since it was winter and they couldn’t fix it, at least fill it with wet sand that would freeze into place. The town I live in (different than where I work) does that and it works surprisingly well.