For Chicago-area motorists-beleaguered, jostled and jangled-the question is eternal, but it gets asked with increasing frequency this time every year:
Why, in this age of stealth technology, space probes, supercomputers and genetic engineering, can’t somebody build a road that stays in one piece?
The signs of failure here are particularly evident in the midst of one of the harshest winters in a decade. Scattered sections of some roads seem to show all the toughness of shortbread cookies in the hands of a 3-year-old.
In short, potholes are just about everywhere.
Just ask the driver whose subcompact dived nose-first into a depression of epic proportions Tuesday morning in the westbound lanes of Diversey Avenue at Ashland Avenue.
“It was the pothole from hell,” said a sympathetic passerby. “It was as wide as the car and had to be at least 2 feet deep.”
Just ask Randy Griffin, who spent more than $1,200 for four new alloy wheels for his car last summer, only to have hostile pavement bend two of them so far this winter.
“The potholes are getting bigger and deeper,” said Griffin, who makes deliveries around the Chicago area. “They’re like ditches.”
Even the biggest, toughest vehicles aren’t immune.
“There’s nothing impervious to these craters,” said Thom Paker, owner of Thom’s Four Wheel Drive and Auto Service in Chicago. “I don’t care if you’re driving a tank.”
The crumbling state of local pavement makes the answer to the eternal question all the more troubling. Man can build pothole-resistant highways. But most of them are in Europe.
U.S. industry and government officials visited Austria, Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands in 1992, and they came away impressed.
“We rode on pavements that were 50 years old, and they were still in excellent condition (despite) very heavy loads,” said George Barney, vice president of market development for the Skokie-based Portland Cement Association. “The bottom line is that the technology is there to build better roads. It is just a question of being willing to pay for them.”
Damage to roads, including potholes, is caused when moisture penetrates cracks, works its way under the pavement and then alternately freezes and thaws as winter temperatures rise and plummet. The pavement is pushed up at spots, where it is pounded by traffic and, ultimately, pulverized.
“Water, water and water are . . . the three biggest problems with pavement,” said Lou Papet, chief of the Federal Highway Administration’s pavement division. “Whenever water gets in, it causes deterioration.”
The recent spell of subzero weather, followed by rain, followed by more subzero temperatures, was about as bad as it gets, local officials said.
The key to the best European roads is a deep and well-laid foundation below the pavement that promotes drainage, highway experts said.
Often, there is a layer of granular material that is 2 to 3 feet thick, topped by 6 to 12 inches of crushed stone or similar material, Papet said. That’s about twice the depth of the foundation of the typical U.S. highway.
The concrete laid atop the base usually is about 12 inches thick, experts said, as it is in the U.S. But road builders on the continent do a more sophisticated job of layering to maximize strength.
First there’s a pour of lower-grade concrete, then a layer of higher-grade concrete, followed by a top coat of very high-quality material that is designed for durability where the rubber meets the road, Barney said.
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When it comes to maintenance, the Europeans also excel. In some instances, they test for the earliest signs of cracking and make pre-emptive repairs. In this country, deterioriation typically is dealt with only after it has become visible.
In fairness, European countries have only a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of miles of highways that the United States does, and they generate substantial funding by imposing taxes that push the price of gasoline to $3 and $4 a gallon.
That permits them to spend more than twice what the U.S. does in some cases to build roads, experts said.
Europeans often don’t award the construction jobs to the lowest bidders, and contractors are given much more freedom to determine how a stretch of road in a certain area should be built, said Martha Schiebel, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Transportation.
But they also are required to provide a warranty that could be for the entire 40-year planned life of the road, she said.
There are signs that American highway officials are becoming more attuned to such a strategy. Several states have adopted higher construction standards, and in Detroit, officials are monitoring the performance of a stretch of interstate that was built last year to what might be called European standards.
More stringent specifications also are being used in some major reconstruction projects, among them Chicago’s Kennedy Expressway rehabilitation, Papet said.
“Illinois has decided it wants to get as good a pavement as it can get, something that will be there a long time and not take much maintenance,” he said.
The Kennedy’s inbound lanes, which were reconstructed last year, got a stone underlay 1 to 2 feet thick that was topped by a 4-inch sub-base of asphalt. A latticework of steel reinforcing bars, coated with epoxy to resist rusting, went on top of the asphalt, and a thick layer of concrete was poured over the rods.
As motorists hope for better times in the future, however, they still face the reality of this winter’s pothole plague. So do the officials whose job it is to fill the chasms.
The city’s Transportation Department has 30 crews on duty and a pothole repair budget of $17 million, up 30 percent from last year. That should be enough to fill 550,000 potholes, up from 1993’s total of 425,000, officials said.
In a few weeks, crews plan to test two new glue-like bonding agents that are designed to prolong the life of asphalt “cold” patches, used to plug holes when temperatures are low.
“History shows that 20 percent (of cold patches) go in the first week, and 40 percent in the first month,” requiring return visits by repair crews, said Ted Maynard, the Transportation Department’s director of quality assurance.
“We would like to get it so the cold patch material lasts for about 18 months,” he said.
Meanwhile, IDOT has between 150 and 200 workers on any given day filling depressions on expressways and state highways in the six-county area. They are going through from 400 tons to 800 tons of asphalt a month.
Nowhere is the battle more brutal than on the aging Stevenson Expressway, which is slated for reconstruction in the mid-1990s-if crews can hold it together until then. Even Mayor Richard Daley has complained about the miserable ride on the highway.
Weather-weary drivers on the Stevenson Tuesday weren’t sure whether to be happy or mad that work crews were out in force filling the potholes.
“There’s been nothing but potholes and crews and all I know is that I’m going to be late again,” said John Tovo, a driver for Metro Messenger Service, as he waited to merge around a pothole crew on the northbound ramp at Harlem Avenue.
Other drivers swore and shook their heads behind fogged-in windows as a nine-member Illinois Department of Transportation crew tried to perform a 15-minute surgery on a 4-foot by 3-inch crater.
The situation is better in some areas than others.
“We’re doing pretty well here,” said Du Page County Engineer Karl Fry. “Our roads are generally in good shape, which helps us out with potholes.”
The pothole situation in Lake County was described as “routine” by officials there. Even Elgin, just recovering from a road salt shortage, is having few problems, said Jerry Rotundo, streets and sanitation supervisor.
But the worst could be yet to come. The freeze-thaw phenomenon usually peaks in late February and early March.