If you’re an off-campus student, you’ve no doubt noticed that Riverside Drive is a lot bumpier than usual. Once-smooth blacktop now resembles the moon’s surface, with crater-like potholes dotting the roadway so many of us traverse to campus each day. Every time the ground freezes and snow melts, the potholes grow in size, forcing drivers to swerve and halt the breaks. City officials must act to patch up these holes before someone gets hurt.
Potholes are an inevitable symptom of winter weather. In a mercurial climate like that of Binghamton, New York, snow seeps into road cracks and expands in freezing temperatures. Roads like Riverside Drive receive added stress from high traffic levels.
These divots are more than a mere inconvenience. Potholes present a serious danger to drivers. Driving over a pothole can result in significant vehicle damage. AAA estimates that pothole damage costs drivers nearly $6.4 billion annually. Even at low speeds, the shock of force can puncture tires, bend rims and break suspensions.
Luckily for drivers, it’s possible to temporarily repair potholes during the winter months. Filling a pothole with soft asphalt mix is a quick, cheap fix. Though far from a long-term solution, this is the typical course of action taken when residents file pothole complaints.
It’s clear that the city government is not addressing pothole complaints in a timely fashion. In the month and a half since the semester began, no large-scale repair has taken place on Riverside Drive.
Perhaps city officials are choosing to wait until arctic temperatures pass to begin pothole repair. This year, Binghamton residents experienced the sixth-coldest winter on record. Cold fronts make potholes more difficult to repair, but this challenge is no reason to neglect the problem altogether and leave drivers to front the bill.
Last January, Mayor Rich David acknowledged the city’s pothole problem. He worked with the state Department of Transportation (DOT) to reduce repair costs for taxpayers. On sections of Interstate 86 and State Route 17 in Broome County, the DOT used a fleet of “Pothole Killer” trucks to repair roads. These trucks use a spray injection process to repair potholes without the operator leaving the truck.
Mayor David acted diligently to solve the pothole problem in years past. Where is the state DOT this year? What are city officials doing to help drivers in 2015? Potholes are a yearly blight and so the same effort must be made to assist them annually.
Student drivers should send a message that the pothole problem needs to be fixed. In January, the city of Binghamton created a mobile app to allow users to submit pothole requests to the city directly. Users can take a photo and send a message describing the problem. Mayor David released the app in the hope that residents could more easily act as “partners” in the repair process.
Let’s take advantage of this new avenue of communication and inundate the app with pothole repair requests. If the city makes the effort to meet us halfway, it’s our responsibility to speak up. If we’re loud enough, maybe city officials will put the same effort into reparations as they put toward the creation of their mobile app.