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Guest Column
How municipalities are changing the pothole patching game Michael Blake | Guest columnist Director of Marketing, KM International
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very spring municipal agencies across the country are faced with a long-standing problem: potholes. Year after year, potholes and road conditions make front page news and are a constant nuisance for drivers who must deal with the potholes and municipalities that must fill them. The typical process of filling potholes is known as the “throw and go” method, but as the country’s infrastructure continues to deteriorate and municipal budgets remain stagnant, municipalities are looking for new and innovative solutions to the pothole dilemma. When it comes to pothole patching, municipalities are facing an uphill battle with a few key factors causing major roadblocks. Issue 1: The process Municipalities adopted the throw and go pothole filling method many years ago. In
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a nutshell this process includes municipal workers driving around filling problematic potholes out of the back of a dump truck or pickup truck. The material, often cold patch material, is thrown in the pothole and lightly compacted with the back of a shovel or not compacted at all. With the current state of the country’s infrastructure, the throw and go method is now nothing more than a temporary repair at best. Another major flaw with the throw and go method is the material selection, which brings us to the next issue: asphalt material selection. Issue 2: Asphalt material In most cases, especially during the colder months when the asphalt plants are closed, municipalities rely on expensive cold patch material for pothole patching. Cold patch is widely considered a temporary fix until municipalilies can revisit the pothole and make a permanent repair with hotmix asphalt during the spring or summer. This temporary fix is not only cost prohibitive, but it takes double the time and labor to repair the same pothole multiple times.
Even when hotmix asphalt is available, municipalities are mostly patching out of dump trucks or pickup trucks and the hotmix asphalt is cold before they can even make it to the job site. Asphalt plants drop hotmix at 350 F, and that temperature immediately starts decreasing as soon as you leave the plant, so depending on drive time, the asphalt could 250 F or below before even you even start patching. This drop in temperature results in a drastic decrease in the structural integrity and longevity of the asphalt material and in turn a drastic decrease in the reliability of the repairs being made. The solution While most municipalities consider the throw and go method the standard when it comes to pothole patching, there is a much more effective, efficient and cost conducive method that will offer municipalities longterm solutions to their pothole problems. In recent years, municipal entities have invested in the right equipment and more importantly started a fundamental shift to deviate away from the status quo when it comes to pothole
