Potholes can be a source of irritation for drivers on the North Coast as they swerve to avoid jarring bumps and potential damage to their vehicles.

For local agencies, filling potholes can also be a struggle.

“Pavement management in general on the North Coast I think is challenging for a number of reasons, and this includes potholes,” Nathan Crater, the engineer for Astoria, said.

Crater, who assists with permitting, capital improvement projects and infrastructure management, passes along complaints of potholes to the Public Works Department.

The process for getting a pothole filled varies based on a number of factors, including shape, size and severity, as well as the road it’s on. A pothole on a street with a high volume of traffic – like near Columbia Memorial Hospital – usually takes priority.

Often the most important piece affecting the time frame in patching is weather – an endless challenge on the North Coast.

“I can tell you that it’s difficult here to repair potholes based on my experience of actually doing it myself,” Mark Buffington, the district manager on the North Coast for the Oregon Department of Transportation, said. “Working in the valley and the Portland area, the difference between fixing a pothole there versus here – it’s definitely tougher on the coast, and it’s weather-related.”

Cities, Clatsop County and the Department of Transportation will look toward the warmer months of summer to tackle road work and fill potholes.

“Most street maintenance is most efficient, most cost-effective when you’ve got prolonged periods of dry weather, where you can address things on a larger scale,” Crater said. “When you have basically three to four months of pretty decent weather, your maintenance schedule is compacted into that.”

Temporary fix

In the colder months, when asphalt plants shut down, local agencies will often patch potholes with a cold mix asphalt, a temporary fix that doesn’t require heating. However, cold mix is less effective and not durable enough for keeping roads intact under heavy traffic.

“Cold mix is not a great tool. Often we’re out in the rain trying to fix potholes and they’re full of water and you get as much water out of the hole as you can and slap the cold mix in,” Buffington said. “After traffic has it for a while, you’ve got a pothole again. It’s a constant battle.”

With cities seeking to tackle street maintenance around the same time, competition in hiring contractors for paving work becomes an issue.

Agencies also point to a shortage of funding and resources in dealing with street maintenance.

“Potholes are a symptom of bad asphalt and ODOT doesn’t have enough money to keep bad asphalt out of there and new asphalt in its place all the time. This is why we call it maintenance,” said Buffington said, who added that his district is also short on staff.

The funding the city receives from fuel taxes typically does not come close to financing an ideal street maintenance program, Crater said.

Agencies in the region primarily track potholes through a logging system, which grows as they receive complaints or locate them during travel. Potholes are typically prioritized based on hazard level and location.

Some cities are trying phone applications to make the system for reporting potholes quicker and more convenient for drivers.

“I think that’s a process we could work on, but again I would tell anybody, even if you do see those things, give us a call, send us an email, do a Facebook post,” Collin Stelzig, the public works director in Warrenton, said. “We definitely try to get to them as soon as we know about them.”

While the Department of Transportation’s regional district prioritizes major highways for filling potholes, such as U.S. Highway 101, U.S. Highway 26 and U.S. Highway 30, a number of streets are also state-owned, meaning maintenance and repair is up to Buffington and his crew.

“You go through our downtown and can see potholes everywhere,” Stelzig said, noting that the state just recently went through and filled some of them.

Frustrations among locals and city leaders about the quality of state-owned roads have bubbled up in the past. Earlier this year, the Warrenton City Commission sent a letter to Buffington concerning the pavement conditions on the roads in the city, including S. Main Avenue and state Highway 104.

“The hole out here,” City Commissioner Rick Newton said at a March meeting, gesturing to the intersection near S. Main Avenue, “that hole will break tires.”

“There are multiple holes that will break tires,” Mayor Henry Balensifer added.

Buffington responded by saying that while patching the road was a priority, permanent repairs could not be done at the time in worn areas near curbs and sidewalks due to the extensive costs.

“I haven’t really noticed a change (with the problem of potholes). I would say that the change that I’ve seen is that the ODOT roads, especially downtown, are getting older,” Stelzig said. “They appear to have more potholes than they have in the past.”

With Warrenton eyeing improvements downtown, there have been talks of the city taking ownership of some roads in the city, but it has been a few years since that conversation took place, Stelzig said.

“We tend to have a better line of communication now than we have had in the past, but I would say that they have their concerns and they have their own issues going on,” Stelzig said. “Just because we make a complaint, doesn’t mean that it’s a huge priority to ODOT.”

Basic maintenance

Amid the challenges for local agencies, Crater sees an opportunity for the more basic maintenance to be done more efficiently.

“The surface maintenance items that we handle aren’t necessarily the easiest, but they’re probably the things that have the least risk associated with running into unknown conditions and things like that which could drive up costs,” he said. “That would be something we are starting to look into – maybe some different administrative framework to procure services from locals … rather than potentially having to go through a more lengthy procurement process if we were going to go down that route. So something a little more immediate.

“Basically utilizing third party assistance more effectively — more efficiently — is the way I would look at that.”