Potholes

Just when you thought it was safe to go on the road again. . .Not to jinx ourselves, but there's a chance we've seen the last of the snow, sleet and other "weather events" that can make even a short drive to the market a harrowing experience. Yet the effects on roadways from what is generally considered the worst local winter in decades will not be fading anytime soon.Goodbye, ice. Hello, potholes.This trying winter has produced the biggest collection of street divots in recent memory. Divots is actually too tame a word for some of the holes that lately have separated countless cars from their hubcaps.

Most weekday mornings, late spring through late summer, Terry Weller and George Foster climb into a bright yellow truck and fire up lasers, high-definition cameras and a bank of digital recorders before hitting the road. Weller and Foster are two of the state's pothole detectives. Their laboratory on wheels is a $1.3 million truthmobile from which asphalt cannot hide its faults. Cracks, bumps and ruts lose their anonymity to ARAN - the Automatic Road Analyzer - a tool that finds trouble before it finds motorists' front tires and suspensions.

They are cosmetic surgeons working to smooth the pockmarked face of Baltimore.And they have been very busy.Using shovels, rakes, tampers and mountains of a gooey gravel and asphalt mix, work crews for the City that Reads have been laboring to save motorists from the City that Knocks Front Ends Out of Whack.Since the big snow and ice storms hit town Jan. 17, a fleet of 30 repair trucks has been fixing 1,000 potholes a day.Before the fiscal year ends June 30, the city will have spent $1 million to fill potholes, at a cost of about $25 per hole.

The Roland Park ciclovia on Oct. 23 was well attended on a cool, sunny Sunday. For the first time, I rode a bike on Roland Avenue. This was the first time I had ridden a bike in the ciclovia and the first time I had ridden in the street itself. As a child, everyone rode on sidewalks, and I have not had a bike since. Even without cars whizzing by, and few riders at 9 a.m., I had to be careful when riding in the ciclovia. Roland Avenue is rut city. A small child on a bike fell over near me when her training wheel stuck in one of the long ruts that run up and down what is supposed to be the grand boulevard of the area.

As my car bounces and rattles over yet another pothole, and I look up at the price of a gallon of regular gasoline — about $3.30 — I have the following question: Is anybody ticked off about this? We were paying about $2.70 a year ago. I mean, I understand there has been unrest in North Africa and the Middle East, and this time there's something seismic going on. But when the price at the pump goes up like this, I don't believe it's because of anything real, such as a drop in the production of crude in Libya.

RICHMOND, Va. — Joie Chitwood has a quirky sense of humor. Before a meet-and-greet with the media at Richmond last weekend, he read a letter from NASCAR that was addressed to him on July 12, 1995: "While we certainly appreciate your interest in NASCAR, we regrettably do not have a position available at this time. " It was signed, "Doug Fritz, director of marketing. " Fritz, standing nearby, got a nice chuckle out of the story. Fritz is now president of Richmond International Speedway.

AN OPTIMIST is a guy who believes the potholes in the alley are half full, not half empty.That is what I told myself this week as I made yet another phone call trying to get the potholes fixed in a two-block stretch of the alley running behind my house. It was the third time in four months that I had called "pothole central" (technically, the complaint line run by the Baltimore City Public Works Department).Every time I call I try to be as upbeat as the cheerful fellow who answers that phone.

The recent onslaught of ice, snow and freezing rain has left Carroll roads with raised sections of pavement and treacherous dips. But the worst is yet to come, road maintenance experts say.When warm weather returns, road sections that have been forced up by freezing water will collapse and become gaping potholes."

Hampstead officials have reached an agreement with the developer of the Oakmont Green golf course community that requires him to repair the pothole-filled main road in the development.Since January, residents of the upscale subdivision have had to navigate around large potholes on Eagle Ridge Court, the entrance to the community off Route 30.James E. Matthews, the Towson-based developer of Oakmont Green, said he expects the road repairs to begin this week and continue through mid-August.The 4-year-old development includes a golf course and 91 single-family home lots, 57 of which have been sold.

It looms in the middle of the street like the gaping mouth of a hungry creature in the pavement.The jagged asphalt rim is its teeth, the shallow pit its stomach. The wheels of unsuspecting drivers are its prey.Mistakenly drive into a pothole, and you will feel the jolt of your front-end alignment going out of whack, of your tire getting ripped, your rim dented, your strut bent.Somewhere, a mechanic must be smiling.Potholes always flourish in the waning days of winter, but the blizzard two weeks ago produced a bumper crop.

Yet again, for the second time in under six months, my car and I have fallen victim to a gaping pothole, both times on Forest Park between Security Boulevard and Garrison. I begin to wonder if the city of Baltimore does not have an agreement with tire repair shops for a kickback when residents have to repeatedly get tires replaced due to shoddy maintenance on the roads. Apparently, the city has plenty of funds to pour into speed and red light cameras. How about funneling some of the fines back to the taxpayers and fix the roads?

If you're plagued by potholes in your community, perhaps this week's Consumer Website of the Week can help. I write The Sun's Watchdog feature, and this week we tackled the ubiquitous pothole --- helping one Dundalk man figure out who to call for craters in Canton. But we also provided contact information, including some websites, to report road surface issues. People within Baltimore can call 311 to submit a service request for potholes or other problems. You can also call 410-396-5352 to report a city problem when you’re elsewhere.

The problem: Giant potholes pockmarked a road in the Canton Industrial Area. The backstory: One complaint unites residents of Central Maryland from the shores of Pasadena to the rolling farmland in Sparks: potholes. If the calls to Watchdog's help line and email address are any indication, potholes and other road-surface issues are the biggest annoyance facing people who regularly traverse the streets in and around Baltimore. But many people say they don't know whom to call to report these problems.

John Fuller asks the wrong question about William Donald Schaefer's estate ("How did Schaefer get so rich?" May 22)). The questions should be: What made Mr. Schaefer prefer serving people over spending his ample public salaries on expensive homes, fancy cars and exotic vacations? Why did he roam the streets and alleys of Baltimore over the weekends to get potholes fixed and trash removed rather than play 18-holes of golf at a country club? And how long will it take before another public servant like Mr. Schaefer comes along?

After getting chased off the Johns Hopkins Hospital campus for the second time in two weeks, then shooed away from Harbor East where she only paused to strategize, Irene Smith pulled her orange truck, sloshing with soup, to a spot near Fallsway and Gay Street, trying to salvage the day. Her motor had barely turned off before a hotel manager told her she had to move. When she pulled forward to satisfy the hotel manager, a meter maid warned her away from the two-hour parking area. After pulling up still farther, a property owner began yelling that Smith's truck — with its gourmet, organic bisques and chowders — would attract the wrong element.

As my car bounces and rattles over yet another pothole, and I look up at the price of a gallon of regular gasoline — about $3.30 — I have the following question: Is anybody ticked off about this? We were paying about $2.70 a year ago. I mean, I understand there has been unrest in North Africa and the Middle East, and this time there's something seismic going on. But when the price at the pump goes up like this, I don't believe it's because of anything real, such as a drop in the production of crude in Libya.

NOW that the broad outline of President Clinton's health-care plan has emerged, it is important to understand what sorts of obstacles, roadblocks and potholes the plan will encounter as it wends through Congress.The easiest way to get a handle on what lies in store is to take a peek behind the veil that was draped around the process by which the plan was born.From February to May, I served as one of the 500-plus members of the Domestic Health Care Task Force advising Hillary Clinton on health-care changes.

Arguing that Marylanders will face a proliferation of potholes without more state money to repair local roads, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and three county executives urged lawmakers Tuesday to support a 10-cent-a-gallon increase in the gas tax. Rawlings-Blake joined County Executives Ken Ulman of Howard County, Ike Leggett of Montgomery County and Rushern Baker of Prince George's County in endorsing an increase in the state's 23.5-cent-a-gallon...

A few years ago, when Maryland's economy was cruising along and the tax money was rolling in, Howard County Executive Ken Ulman could count on receiving about $16 million a year from the state to keep local roads in good repair. But this year, like the year before, he didn't even get $500,000. And unless the state can tap into a new stream of money, things aren't looking much better for 2012. Howard County's story is typical of jurisdictions across Maryland. With the exception of Baltimore City, every jurisdiction in the state has seen its road repair money slashed by about 97 percent from levels in budget year 2007.