Driven to find city's worst pothole

With city officials saying heavy snows and fluctuating temperatures have made this one of the worst pothole seasons in recent winters, my bosses dispatched me from my plush cubicle near the men's room to find ...

[Rob]

A BIG one just opened up on the south side of Bellmont right in front of the Red Line stop. You can easily see it as you're coming out of the station.

[CHRISSY]

NORTH AVE BY MELROSE PARK FOR 3 BLOCKS IS TERRIBLE ALL OF CICERO FROM FOSTER TO ARCHER

[Janko]

Hopefully, the city, county and state are doing the engineering and preparation of bid specs now for immediate asphalt overlays of the worst streets and highways to begin just as soon as the weather breaks. Too often, government units wait until spring and summer to put out their overlay bid requests, making it autumn before the work is done. If you wait, you have crews out spending more money with patching. Don't get me wrong: filling the potholes is important and when it's dry, hot patches are better. But the overlays can be instantaneous when it's warmer and will last five years or more. And hopefully, the governmental units will split their bid projects so that multiple firms -- not just one -- can win the projects and get started. Source of funds: Motor Fuel tax bonds based on a projection of current (no tax increase) gas tax revenues. And those bonds also should be prepared for bidding RIGHT NOW! Attention media: Check to see if it's being done at city, county and state transportation offices.

[Marketing Tool]

My understanding is alot of streetwalkers work the areas of the biggest potholes. The holes slow down traffic so they can advertise their wears. Free enterprise at it's best.

[Mr_Europe]

This city looks like one in a Third World country judged by its roads. Maybe City Hall ough to ask Scandinavian countries for advice and dump the corrupted roadbuilding contractors that deliver the least bang for the taxpayers' buck...

[Jeff]

Couldn't agree more with Mr. Europe, but this is Chicago where the greed is enormous and the taxpayer is screwed.

[Kurt E]

I think this happened on Cicero no t 100%, but we have a client that brought there car in becasue they hit a pothole that not only blew two tires, bent and ruined both rims it also set off the side airbag! I work at the dealership, and we have some one with blown tires coming in every five minutes in serivce

[Rich]

What a waste of money, time, and space

[Alternative View]

Why are people not reading newspapers anymore? The Tribune--with all of its resources--gives us a light feature on finding a pothole, complete with colorful descriptions of coffee being sprayed over the company car, while Janko has actually put his thumb on the issue. You take what he said and also factor it through the corruption, cost overruns, etc that seem to be apart of every project in Chicago and I bet you'd have a real story: that we are paying billions for inferior road, bid-out by political hacks who dont know what they're doing and built by politically-connected construction companies who get rich over the build and the repair contract. THAT's the story.

Janko wrote:

Hopefully, the city, county and state are doing the engineering and preparation of bid specs now for immediate asphalt overlays of the worst streets and highways to begin just as soon as the weather breaks. Too often, government units wait until spring and summer to put out their overlay bid requests, making it autumn before the work is done. If you wait, you have crews out spending more money with patching. Don't get me wrong: filling the potholes is important and when it's dry, hot patches are better. But the overlays can be instantaneous when it's warmer and will last five years or more. And hopefully, the governmental units will split their bid projects so that multiple firms -- not just one -- can win the projects and get started. Source of funds: Motor Fuel tax bonds based on a projection of current (no tax increase) gas tax revenues. And those bonds also should be prepared for bidding RIGHT NOW! Attention media: Check to see if it's being done at city, county and state transportation offices.

[Allison]

Why the HELL is this a story? There are things actually happening in the world, and this dufus is going around searching for potholes? Morons!

[jackie]

I agree with Rich- waste of time, money, space- and energy and resources. 100 miles on the company car? How many gallons of gas? For something we drivers are already painfully aware of?
Thanks.

[suki]

"Downers Grove, Ogden Avenue from Belmont to Fairview is the absolute worst for gigantic, tire slashing, rim-bending potholes. Prairie Ave. in Downers is a joke, too. Where are the repair crews in Downers Grove? Help!"

The crews were out on Saturday doing repairs.

[suki]

The worst potholes are filled with water. You don't know the depth until you hit bottom.

[Speedy Gonzalez]

There's always been major potholes under the train on Ogden and Western and never have they been fixed.

[Hugh Hefner]

suki wrote:

The worst potholes are filled with water. You don't know the depth until you hit bottom.

Potholes and women are so much alike

[gypsycat]

You write really well. I enjoyed your humor and writing style.

[TXB]

As many of the posters mentioned, the potholes under the 47th St. Metra viaduct leading out to LSD are really, really bad--you can't go above a crawling speed, and it should really be closed entirely so it can get the work done that it so desperately needs. For the other posters commenting that this pothole story is a waste of time: You fail to realize that this being America, our lives are much more affected by the potholes than everything else happening around the world. Our citizenry insists that it be this way.

[SANCHNETTE]

All those late UFO viewing must be aliens trying to find out where all thier missing pods landed.I can tell them-they made huge holes landing in the streets of Chicago. :D

[bobby wong]

Should we invest in some better technology to fix the pot hole so that they won't surface as often???

The money is better spent that way than sending out the crews all the time and paying out all the claims. This is actually helps the economny as we could save gas money from getting to our destination faster and the city could put the money into better use.

[Ssgt]

Finding pots holes is all good but I wanted to know what the city is gone to do about them. Yes I saw the pictures of some pot holes getting filled but he never said if they all were getting fixed. I'm in the military and Chicago is my home town and when I come to visit pot holes is always a big problem. More than any city I've been in! I always come in the summer and it is still bad. So I don't buy the excuss of it been just this winter. City officials need to get on the ball.