Jan 29, 2018 4 min read

Four state routes and 52 miles of municipal roadways course through the city of Washington. None of their surfaces, in late January, is entirely smooth, and some threaten to become obstacle courses of broken pavement.

Potholes. ‘Tis the season.

“We’ve been taking care of that for the past week, using cold patch to the best of our abilities,” said Ken Westcott, Washington councilman and director of public works. “Until the snow melted, we couldn’t do anything. Now they’re calling for one to three more inches of snow, so we’ll start doing this again. And we’ll probably be patching the same holes.”

Freeze-and-thaw cycles are but part of the pothole process that is a rite of winter throughout the tri-state, and is historically odious in Western Pennsylvania. Alternating temperatures conspire with salt, heavy traffic and already-worn roadways to create more holes in a mile stretch of asphalt than a duffer finds at Lindenwood Golf Club.

Risking one’s tires, axles and front-end alignment is not a pleasant prospect for many commuters, and Westcott certainly can sympathize. He fields a number of road-related calls, potholes being a favorite topic this time of year. He not only is eager to satisfy, he encourages the public to phone in.

“We try to respond to complaints as quickly as possible,” Westcott said. “If it’s a bigger street and a major pothole, we’ll try to get there quicker.

“We’re asking people to be patient, and we’re asking them to alert us (about potholes).”

Some locals have cited a crevasse, at the intersection of Beau Street and Jefferson Avenue, as being particularly ominous. Westcott called Tyler Avenue “a problem area.”

He said the city has a road crew of eight plus a mechanic handling those 52 miles of municipal pavement. “I think they’re doing a great job,” he said. “We don’t have the manpower Pittsburgh has.”

Public works is not responsible for maintaining the state routes passing through the city – 19 (Main Street), 40 (Maiden Street), 18 (Jefferson) and 136 (Beau). That falls on the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.

Waynesburg’s roads, on the contrary, “are not too bad,” said Bryan Cumberledge, assistant manager and supervisor of streets for the borough. “Sometimes, we see some really nasty (potholes), but that hasn’t been the case this year.”

He said the municipality compiles “a list of complaints” and urges borough employees to keep track of any pothole issues they encounter during their travels. The borough then strives to respond quickly. Waynesburg has four unionized crew members, plus Cumberledge, overseeing 15.7 miles of roadways.

Those roads, Cumberledge said, get a lot of TLC – literally. “We try to be reasonable with salt,” he said. “It’s kind of a double-edged sword because you want your roads to be clear, but you know what salt can do. It’s a balancing act of when to salt and when not to salt. If we had a crystal ball, we’d know what to do.”

Water main breaks are another issue. “This happens a lot of times in winter,” he said. “We come in and do the best we can. We put in gravel, then cold patch, but that settles over time.”

Cumberledge said his department sometimes gets grief for conditions on the state routes – 19, 21 and 218 – cutting through town, even though those are PennDOT’s bailiwick. Yet he said what occurs on those roadways is a local concern.

“The state routes have a lot of well traffic,” he said. “Big trucks, like the tri-axles, don’t help.”

Potholes have not been a problem – yet – in Carroll Township. But road foreman Dave Barkey expects that to be down the pike.

“We’ve had no rim-benders, just small potholes now,” he said. “I anticipate that being in two or three weeks, especially if we have (below zero) one day and 40 above the next. That’s when you have the most problems.”

Barkey said about two weeks ago, his five-member road crew patched potholes with three-fourths of a ton of cold patch – a routine repair. “We didn’t notice anything super large or deep.”

A major difficulty, he said, is that cracks routinely form in roads over time, and when that happens, traffic and temperature swings can lead to large holes. “If you don’t seal the cracks,” Barkey added, “and you get warm then cold, they will pull apart.”

Once again, it’s pothole season in Western Pennsylvania.