Fox 31 reports that CDOT is reminding Colorado drivers to watch for potholes after a wet May, with rain, snow, and fluctuating spring temperatures helping create the lovely pavement craters we all know and swerve around like we are qualifying for Monaco. CDOT explained that the freeze-thaw cycle allows water to get beneath the road surface, expand and contract, and weaken pavement until the road starts looking like it lost a fight with a backhoe.
The article notes CDOT spent $9.07 million in the last fiscal year maintaining 85,600 square yards of roadway and using more than 107,800 labor hours, while its three-year average is about $8.79 million, 91,250 square yards, and 104,000 labor hours. CDOT says pothole fixes usually take 10 to 30 minutes each, depending on size and depth, and asks drivers to give crews room when they are working.
The Bullet Point Brief
- CDOT says May’s rain, snow, and temperature swings are making potholes worse. Which is true, but also a little like announcing that wind may be present in eastern Colorado. Thank you for the bulletin.
- The freeze-thaw cycle is the villain here: water gets under pavement, freezes, expands, thaws, contracts, and leaves the road looking like it has been shelled by a very patient artillery unit.
- CDOT recommends avoiding potholes or slowing down when possible. Great advice, assuming the driver is not on I-70 east, Highway 14, or I-76, where “avoiding potholes” sometimes requires the reflexes of a fighter pilot and the suspension budget of NASCAR.
- Drivers whose vehicles are damaged by potholes on CDOT roads can file a claim through the Colorado Office of State Risk Management. That is comforting in the same way a Band-Aid is comforting after stepping on a rake.
- CDOT crews are doing the work, and the article makes clear they are putting in real hours. The problem is not the folks patching pavement. The problem is a state legislature that keeps treating transportation funding like an optional hobby instead of one of government’s basic jobs.
My Bottom Line
I am sorry, but I found this story so laughable I had to drop it here. Not because potholes are funny. They are not funny when they eat a tire, bend a rim, wreck an alignment, or send a trailer bouncing like a carnival ride assembled by interns. It is funny because the reminder lands like this problem suddenly popped up last Tuesday.
Drive I-70 out east lately? Highway 14? I-76? Dodging potholes is an Olympic sport out here, and rural Colorado has been training without sponsors for years. Some stretches of state highway do not feel maintained. They feel negotiated. You pick a lane, say a prayer, and hope the crater ahead is shallow enough to keep your fillings in place.
Look, I get it. The men and women at CDOT are pros. They work hard. They are out there in traffic, weather, heat, cold, and every kind of mess Colorado throws at them. They can only do what the state legislature funds them to do, and lately that has not been much. You cannot patch your way out of decades of underinvestment with press releases and orange cones.
Maybe the legislature needs a field trip. Load them onto an old bus with bad suspension and take them down a few state highways out east. No luxury coach. No padded seats. No staff briefing folders. Just a rattling bus, bad shocks, and 80 miles of reality. By the end, their awareness level on transportation funding might rise right along with their chiropractor bills.
Proper transportation funding is not glamorous. It does not come with ideological hashtags or ribbon-cutting speeches about saving democracy. But it is one of the primary purposes of government. Roads matter. Bridges matter. Freight matters. Agriculture matters. Commuters matter. Rural Colorado matters. And if the legislature cannot get that through its head, then maybe a few hours bouncing across eastern Colorado pavement will do what common sense apparently has not.
Source: Fox 31
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