Tuesday, May 13, 2008

State funding shortage holds up pothole repairs

I suppose this is going to be one of those reasons why we should be calling for a statewide capitol program and that there has to be a way Springfield will be able to get it down without much pain. From the Sun-Times:

Chicago is fighting a losing battle against potholes because arterial street re-surfacing has been put on hold for the last two years, aldermen were told Monday.

First Deputy Transportation Commissioner Tom Powers blamed a shortage of state funding, apparently tied to the Illinois General Assembly's failure to approve a capital plan.

"The state owes us $80 million. Typically, we use the state money to ... re-surface. And we haven't done any arterial re-surfacing in the last two years, with the exception of funds provided by the county to do work on county roads. That's the only arterial re-surfacing we've done in the last two years," Powers told the City Council's Transportation Committee.

"That translates into roughly 25 miles a year that has not been done. The snowball effect to that is we've had to take our resources and put them on [patching potholes] on arterial streets that should have been re-surfaced the last two years. It's added to our durations on filling potholes on other roads."

Transportation Commissioner Tom Byrne added, "All our federal monies we cannot use because the state won't match. They haven't matched any of our infrastructure projects for the last three years. If federal funds are there for major projects and arterial re-surfacing but the state will not match our funding, we cannot do those projects."

Byrne said 20 city crews -- including seasonal workers called in earlier than expected -- have filled more than 400,000 potholes since December, using 8,000 tons of material.

But they cannot keep pace with the growing demand. They routinely fill at least 2,000 potholes during daylight hours, only to get 900 more calls the same night.

As of Monday morning, 2,100 potholes had been called in to the 311 non-emergency system and entered into the city's computerized mapping system. Potholes in alleys were left untouched until last week.

Unfortunately I'm not sure about what happens this year. Too bad I have last year as a guide. It was a mess well I'm saying this as merely an observer but surely for the participants in that overtime session last year as well.

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