As the winter season starts to fade away, potholes start
springing up.

But road crews are ready to spring into action, already starting
to fix some potholes in the area.

Patricia Shinaberger, McKean County maintenance manager for the
Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, said the agency will be
filling in potholes as weather permits. She said crews shouldn’t
fill potholes in the rain since the cold mix doesn’t work well and
will not stick or stay there in those conditions, as well as very
cold weather.

“We can’t really do it when it’s snowing or raining,”
Shinaberger said Thursday. “We made some headway yesterday. The
weather’s looking good for next week so we should have all our
crews out next week working on the potholes. We’ll have them out
every single day until we put a good dent in them.”

Gary Alcock, head of the Bradford City Department of Public
Works, said city streets crews have been filling potholes all
winter long, adding the weather conditions don’t effect the crews’
ability to fill the potholes.

“But (the fill) doesn’t hold with cold patches,” Alcock said.
“It’s just at temporary patch. If it freezes and rethaws … it’s in
one day and out the next. The freezing and thawing opens the road
and lets water get in. It freezes and expands, creating another
hole.”

“We’ve had a lot of bad ones that just popped this year in
several locations,” Shinaberger said. “It does seem like we’re
having a really bad year.”

Shinaberger said there are some very bad pothole spots on Route
46 in East Bradford and on Route 59 coming out of Smethport, as
well as other areas.

Alcock said there’s not a lot of areas with potholes.

“But the ones that have them there are pretty bad,” Alcock said.
“The worst area is East Main Street from Mill Street to Main
Street. We fill (potholes) every day if it needs it. If there’s a
lot of them, we’ll mill out the street and repave.”

Alcock said the portion of East Main Street that is bad is not
set this year for repaving but may be next year.

“With the construction (on U.S. Route 219) going on, we don’t
want to do a street (that might affect traffic because of the
construction),” Alcock said. “We have to work with what they’re
doing. We don’t want the heavy equipment and traffic over it (if
it’s going to be repaved).”

Alcock said crews don’t try to do much preparation with cold
patches, but there’s more preparation when using a hot patch, which
is a permanent repair.

Shinaberger said sometimes, but not often, a cold mix will work
as a permanent fix. She said with the hot mix, crews need to make
sure there is a straight side cut out of the pothole so the mix has
a solid side to which to attach the material. She said once the hot
patch is in place, crews have to make sure no one drives on it
right away.

Shinaberger said as soon as the asphalt plants open up in about
mid-April or May, crews will start with the hot mix pothole fixes.
She said the weather by that time should be pretty good and crews
will be able to load up on the material with the plants opened
up.

Alcock said though winter started late, the weather evened
itself out with storms near the end of the season so the department
wasn’t able to save money on salt used on the roads.

“We’re a little under budget,” Alcock said.

Shinaberger said if money is left over, which is possible with
the winter weather not arriving until February this year, that
money will be put toward PennDOT’s paving program in the
summer.

“The more we save in the winter, the more we can pave,”
Shinaberger said. “But (winter is) never over until it’s over.”

“If there’s any potholes that anyone may see, feel free to call
our department and report them,” Alcock said. “We do drive around
(to find what potholes need fixed). But there may have been some we
have not seen that developed the following day. If you call the
office, within 24 hours it will be patched.”

Meanwhile, Shinaberger said “(We’re) just asking people to be
patient with us another week or so when we’re able to get all the
snow off.

“In addition to the potholes, the flooding we had on about March
5 created a lot of very low shoulders. Once the potholes are fixed,
we need to really address those shoulders. Where I sit, we have
five inches of snow on the shoulders (of the roads) up here at
Mount Alton.”