First came the winter storms.
Then, like clockwork, came the potholes.
With the latest round of ice and snow melted away, road maintenance crews were out in force on city streets and state highways Monday turning their attention to filling the potholes while motorists tried to maneuver around them.
The three winter storms since Feb. 15, with little time for crews to do any work in between the wintry barrages, have taken their toll.
"We probably had the same number/size potholes, but over a longer period of time," Danny Straessle, a spokesman for the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department, said in an email. "This winter season came in three successive weeks and all of a sudden the potholes appeared."
He said it is "definitely accurate that crews have had little time between storms. Especially with the heavy rain that preceded the last storm."
Katie Doyle and several other motorists learned that firsthand Monday on a busy stretch of Rahling Road in west Little Rock.
She was driving to work in her 2014 Hyundai Elantra on Rahling toward Chenal Parkway and just past Taylor Loop Road about 7:15 a.m. when she spotted several cars pulled over to the side of the street.
"At that moment, I came onto a pothole the size of a swimming pool," the 30-year-old paralegal said.
"My front left tire went through and shredded," she said. "It was still dark and it was foggy. There was no time to see it. Even if I did, it took up the whole lane, and I couldn't go into oncoming traffic."
Hers was one of at least five cars that hit the pothole.
Doyle's father, Jim Doyle, picked up her and took her to work and then waited for the tow truck. The elder Doyle, president of the Irish Cultural Society of Arkansas, took to social media to warn other motorists, employing a bit of blarney in the process.
"Drivers beware! There is a HUGE pothole in southbound Rahling Rd. just past the fire station," he wrote on Facebook. "They might need to send spelunkers down in the hole to make sure no subcompacts are down there!"
Now his daughter is facing a bill of more than $500 to replace the tire and rim, the latter of which is on order. Her car won't be ready until the end of the week, she said.
The city quickly dispatched a road crew to fix the pothole. The crew was one of nine the city had on the streets Monday to repair the damage left after the winter storms, said Mark Jacobi, operations coordinator for the city's Public Works Department. The city normally operates with just two or three pothole crews.
"We're putting everybody in," he said. "The challenge is to get this done as quickly as we can."
He urged residents to call the city's 311 nonemergency service request line to report potholes. The line typically receives about 1,300 street-related requests each year. "But this is our busiest time of the year," Jacobi said.
"I feel sorry for drivers," he said. "We just ask them to try to slow down. A lot of those potholes are hard to spot right now."
Katie Doyle's car was one of six Crain Hyundai of Little Rock took in Monday with flat tires and bent rims.
"I haven't had this many at one time for something like this," said Ken Palmer, service manager for the dealership at Colonel Glenn Road and Interstate 430. "I've never seen anything like it."
Another tough spot for motorists was on U.S. 67/167 through Jacksonville, where Routh Wrecker Service of Little Rock responded to five or six disabled vehicles over the weekend, dispatcher Todd Hollingsworth said.
A contractor on a project near Redmond Road and Main Street in Jacksonville is planning an emergency overlay this week, Straessle said. A state maintenance crew was working Monday on a southbound section just south of Vandenberg Boulevard.
"They are out addressing that, trying to get done what they can," he said.
In Little Rock today and Wednesday, a section of Interstate 30 between Roosevelt Road and West 65th Street will have lanes closed while crews repair potholes, the department said.
The westbound outside lane will be closed from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. today, weather permitting. The eastbound outside lane will be closed during the same hours Wednesday, again weather permitting.
One pothole on Interstate 40 near West Memphis required an emergency response Friday, Straessle said. It was so large that heavy trucks were stopping in front of it and then, when traffic was clear, driving around it.
The city of North Little Rock was doing what it could Monday as well. But rain limited the city's options.
"Today, the asphalt plant isn't even running because of the rain," said Patrick Lane, the city's street department director. "On days when we can't get asphalt, we are using a coal mix, which is temporary and comes out of a bag. It's not ideal, but it helps until we can get the asphalt."
Problem areas include Springhill Road and Smokey Lane, where crews were patching potholes. "Large trucks seem to have more impact on [those] roads," Lane said, adding that North Hills Boulevard was also getting some extra attention.
Lane pointed out that the city doesn't maintain some state highways that run through North Little Rock. Those include John F. Kennedy Boulevard, Pike Avenue, and Riverfront and MacArthur drives. Residents should call the state highway department to report issues with those roads, he said.
The city of Little Rock began pothole patching Thursday, Jacobi said. "As soon as we can we park the snow equipment and get out the maintenance equipment."
For now the city crews are using a high-performance cold asphalt mix because the ideal dry conditions aren't available for hot asphalt mixes, he said.
But even those are only "semi-permanent" fixes because when a pothole appears, it is evidence of a weak spot in the road.
"They never get better," Jacobi said.
The potholes might be worse this time because crews didn't have time to patch them when they first appeared and over time they worsened, thanks mainly to water refreezing and then melting and repeating the cycle several times, he said.
With water expanding 9 percent in volume when it freezes, "that cycle is what causes the problem."
Another problem is that the city didn't have much money available for more durable repairs such as asphalt overlays. The city has started an overlay program again. This year, it will total $5 million, Jacobi said.
All of that was of little solace to Katie Doyle, who wished the work on Rahling had been done sooner. The road "has clearly been in poor shape for a while, but this is the first time I know of any work being done on it," she said. "It's been a rough Monday."
Information for this article was contributed by Jake Sandlin of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Metro on 03/10/2015
