Public Works directors on the North Shore are attributing the increased number of potholes on roads this year to large temperature swings.
This phenomenon has been costly for their respective towns, these public officials say: In some areas, the expenses for covering the damages are twice as high as usual.
“This year is the worst in 20 years,” said Lynnfield Department of Public Works (DPW) Director John Tomasz.
“I’ve never seen it like this and definitely the worst I’ve ever seen in my memory,” added Lynnfield Assistant Town Administrator Bob Curtin.
Swampscott appears to be hit most this year, with the pothole-patching costs being 50 percent higher than average, said Swampscott DPW Director Gino Cresta, noting that the expenses are still within the operating budget.
“We will have to put off some of the sidewalks’ potholes till spring, ” said Cresta.
The average pothole-repair cost in Swampscott is around $650, with $400 being spent on labor and $250 for the asphalt, and the town owns one asphalt hot-box trailer.
Lynnfield asphalt expenses remain within their average road-repair budget. The town has two vehicles, and two people work on each of them.
“It is $1,200 to $1,300 for a vehicle and the labor, and it amounts to $2,500 for two vehicles a day,” said Tomasz.
The pothole-repair crews work every day “that we have, every day the weather allows,” as Lynn DPW Commissioner Andrew Hall put it, and blamed the temperature swings for the potholes.
“It’s just been the perfect storm with the snow, thawing, and flash freezing,” said Curtin.
“You never know with the weather. This year it is very cold weather, and very warm weather, and very wet weather — we have all three of those this year,” said Tomasz.
Freezing water is what causes the pavement to break up this time of the year, said Saugus DPW Director Brendan O’Regan. Water melts during the day and gets into the cracks and crevices in the pavement, and then freezes and expands, forming the pothole.
O’Regan also noted that this year, the situation with the potholes in Saugus is “normal to slightly above normal,” and the town does not have to employ state funds, as was the case in 2014-15. O’Regan compared the potholes to mosquitos in the summer.
“It’s a cyclical thing,” he said.
Asphalt hot-box trailers — which are vehicles with a hot box of asphalt stationed on a heated trailer — are best to patch potholes. Tomasz said this works better because the asphalt stays warmer this way.
“If you put asphalt on a truck it cools off within an hour or two,” said Cresta. “With a hot box, we can keep the asphalt warm for days because it is going to heat on.”
The towns have developed a schedule for patching the potholes. The usual working routine would start with repairing the bigger potholes on the major roads and then fixing the smaller ones on the sidewalks.
In Lynn, the pothole-repair crews take geographic routes, but will fix potholes that they see along the way, Hall said.
Other North Shore towns try to take care of the worst potholes first.
“If we receive complaints from the citizens, we will continue to cover the worst pothole first,” said Tomasz.
Cresta added that if the Swampscott DPW receives multiple complaints about one specific pothole, the crew will address it right away.
Lynnfield experiences an unusual number of pothole complaints.
“We’ve never received this many calls about potholes,” said Curtin.
The number of complaints in other towns on the North Shore is about the same as usual.
