Procedures for Repair of Potholes in Asphalt-Surfaced Pavements

simlevesque an hour ago | parent | next [-]

The root of the problem (literally) is that when potholes appear it's mostly because what's under became too porous and humid so what's over it separates easily. Patching the hole isn't a good fix but the alternative is closing roads which wrecks the economy. The other problem is that the public always asks: "why isn't it patched ?" and if you don't do it you look like you're not competent enough to be in charge. And the cycle continues.

	▲	observationist 37 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		And when you go to your local government, demand a fix, they'll contract a union shop to do the work, often mandated by law, and they will advocate for the least durable, most expensive fix, so as to ensure recurring work happens at a maximum frequency. Attention to certain roads, duration of work is often politicized - someone with good friends gets quick, top tier fixes, but someone who annoys the local council might see months of roadwork dragging on forever, or halfassed repairs, or potholes ignored for years. Lovely little civilization we have, eh?

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seanhunter 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think they should have included the official NYC procedure, which is:

1. Dig out around the affected area

2. leave massive dent in the surface for what seems like years

3. Maybe cover it with a few janky bits of wood and/or metal sheets that make a hideous clanking noise all day and night and have the same approximate surface friction as an ice rink so are pretty murderous to any 2-wheeled road user

4. Leave this solution to mature like a fine wine

5. I really mean single malt whiskey. You can leave it basically as long as you like

6. There is no step six.

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bigbuppo an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Whoa, fancy. All we get are open pits with a few barricades around them until the news finally starts talking about the tree growing in the middle of the road.

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pstuart 34 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My understanding is the DOT gets pissy if locals fill in the pothole themselves, but I imagine that there's enough interested people to do vigilante road repair if they weren't subject to government harrassment.

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idiotsecant an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

nobody leaves a dent in the surface on purpose, the problem is that whatever caused the pothole is almost certainly still causing it to sink under the surface. A patch doesn't fix the problem, it just makes it less bad.

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SoftTalker an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Yep. Step 0 in the above list is "build a road with insufficient subsurface/foundation preparation and drainage"

	▲	dylan604 39 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		There's a section of town that was developed on an old swampy bit of land. They drained the swamp but did not let the land dry/settle long enough after draining the water. This caused parts of the road to sink, but not enough to break/crack the roads. Instead, they just have swells as you're driving along. It's actually impressive on how much sinking happened without breaking the road itself.

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deepsun an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Less bad is ok.

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btbuildem 15 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You haven't lived until you've paid municipal taxes to see one of these things at work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVFFsKArEFk

I've literally watched them approach a pothole full of water, blow the water out with compressed air, retract the blower while the pothole refills, excrete asphalt mix into the watery hole then pat it down and compress it with a roller -- then proceed to the next pothole, driving over and denting the just-"repaired" one.

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NegativeLatency 6 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why fix them, it's free traffic calming.

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tomasphan an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In my beautiful hometown of Philadelphia they have a novel way of repairing potholes that I've yet to observe in other cities:

1. Do nothing for 9 months. This allows the pothole to mature until ready for step 2.

2. Put a traffic cone in the pothole.

3. After a couple weeks of public notice (traffic cone) dump hot asphalt into the hole, making sure to top off several inches above street level.

4. DO NOT WAIT for asphalt to cool down before opening the street. This allows for asphalt to stick to tires, shoes etc.

5. Make sure to leave a significant bump and don't compact the asphalt so next winter it will open up again.

6. Make sure to put any utility covers (manholes, drains etc) directly in the wheel path for maximum damage.

7. Profit!

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OgsyedIE 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

As an aside, why do DoT pdfs have such gigantic margins/padding around the text content?

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ceejayoz 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It allows note taking and corrections on drafts.

Same deal with things like SCOTUS opinions. (Random example: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-624_b07d.pdf)

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lostlogin an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I’d have thought the 20+ pages before getting to the point would have allowed scrap paper for notes.

Maybe the foreword, acknowledgements, preface and various notes contained something of value.

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ceejayoz an hour ago | parent [-]

When you're driving a small car, do you expect the lanes to automatically shrink for you?

It's a standard so no one has to think "does this page have enough space", and the notes are often relevant to the current page. Stuff like the photo in https://www.thedailybeast.com/photo-details-obamas-speech-ed...

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lostlogin an hour ago | parent [-]

I was referring to the notes, notices and various preambles occupying the first quarter of the document.

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ceejayoz 44 minutes ago | parent [-]

Which are a very different sort of notes than the ones I'm talking about.

They print it out and people go over it with a pen, make corrections, comments, etc.

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dylan604 37 minutes ago | parent [-]

To me, I read it as they are stating those pages are really useless fluff that could essentially just be ripped out and used as scratch paper as they seemingly serve no other purpose.

	▲	lostlogin 30 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, this. But as ceejayoz points out, taking notes on the actual page is better. I was having a dig at how long it took for the document to get to the point.

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conductr 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Also allows flexibility in terms of binding options

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HPsquared an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Paper industry lobbying?