It’s pothole season, but a consistent winter staved off the worst

The occasional car-rattling jolt motorists are experiencing these days is a reminder that both spring - and pothole season - are here.

However, thanks to a relatively consistent cold winter without the severe freeze-thaw cycle that creates wheel-busting potholes when water slips into cracks, freezes and expands, officials in the Corridor said damage to streets this year is pretty average.

'I would say maybe above average to average,” said Brock Holub, Iowa City's superintendent of Streets and Traffic Engineering. 'A couple of years ago it was worse. ... Last year was not as bad as this year.”

Cedar Rapids Street Operations Manager Mike Duffy said despite the extreme cold temperatures and a fairly quick warm-up, there was an insulated ground cover for most of the year - so there was not a deep frost that would have potentially caused widespread pothole issues.

Additionally, he said, the Paving for Progress street-repair program, funded by a 1-cent local-option sales tax, has helped crews keep up on crack sealing and maintenance. Crews go out by route, especially to highly traveled ones, to address potholes.

'Really it's sort of a battle between us and water, trying to keep the water out of the pavement and not allowing it to freeze,” Duffy said.

Marion Public Services Director Rylan Miller said the city has seen an 'average spring so far” in terms of potholes.

'We haven't received a ton of complaints, we really haven't,” Miller said. 'Somewhere between 15 and 25, but that's normal. People see one and they call it in.”

Holub said two years ago, Iowa City was plowing snow into April. The freeze-thaw cycle lasting into the spring was tougher on the roads.

'When it sits there and goes back and forth, back and forth ... that becomes a real issue for those roads,” Holub said. 'Rain tends to blast a lot of holes out. We have to put material in there. It doesn't like to stay.”

Officials in all three communities said more time and resources have been invested into city streets, which goes a long way in preventing potholes and ensuring fixes last longer.

Doug Wilson, the Paving for Progress manager in Cedar Rapids, said over time that some streets Duffy's team had to spend significant time on have been replaced under the program, freeing crews to focus on preventive maintenance.

And two-thirds of Paving for Progress projects have been in residential areas, Wilson added, so it's not just the major streets that have been improved.

'Those are areas that before wouldn't have seen a lot of work,” Duffy said. 'We would have gone in there, would've done some patching. Now we're going in, we're milling out sections of roadway, we're placing curb, we're doing full asphalt overlays. And so those are improvements that people really appreciate. It really cleans up neighborhoods.”

While pothole-patching crews have to rely on a cold mix asphalt right now that doesn't bond to the existing road material as well, Holub said they'll begin using a hot mix asphalt next month.

'That stuff will stay in place,” he said. 'We make longer lasting, better patches.”

While this year's pothole season might be average so far, Holub warns that more could still come.

'I don't think we're out of that pothole season yet, to be honest,” he said. 'Spring rains create some issues. ... I don't necessarily think we're in the clear yet. It's pretty early in the season to say we haven't seen the worst of it.”

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