Hello potholes, my old friends

With the recent rise in temperatures melting off much of the ice that has caked North Idaho roadways, the Idaho Transportation Department is now tackling another one of its many winter hazards — potholes.

ITD Public Information Officer Megan Jahns explains that crews currently have two small stretches of westbound Interstate 90 closed down to a single lane due to deteriorating conditions and potholes.

“We have two trouble spots right now,” Jahns said. “Our crews, day and night shift both, have been patching between every storm and every blowout. The weather conditions make it such that, right now, we need to keep those portions of the lanes shut down so it is not a hazard to drivers.”

Located at mileposts 33 (just west of the Rose Lake exit) and 48 (Smelterville), the suspension-killing parts of the roadway continued to grow in the last month and Band-Aid fixes just weren’t cutting it.

During this early part of winter, ITD only has the capability of making short-term fixes with a cold-patch mix. Even in the best conditions, the cold-patch is only a temporary solution. When the older age of those parts of I-90 is factored in as well, it becomes even less effective.

“When you put the patch in, it is partially staying in because of the quality of the road around the patch. In this case, it’s falling apart, so there is nothing really to hold it together,” Jahns said. “That part can get missed by drivers. They can be like, ‘man, this pothole is here, back again!’ We know it’s going to do that, it’s unfortunately a maintenance headache that we have to get through to summer and better weather conditions where we can use hot mix to repair.”

As for more long-term solutions, multiple factors come into play that ITD doesn’t have much control over.

“The process to get it completely fixed is to work with an asphalt plant, the closest one being out of Hayden,” Jahns explained. “We then have to pay them money to start operations again, because their plants shut down for the winter season because there is no construction, and then find a contractor who will give us an estimate on how much the repairs are going to cost.”

This process could begin within the next couple weeks, but a timetable for a complete fix is unknown at this time.

While numerous rough spots can be found on the area’s numerous highways, the stretches at milepost 33 and 48 are the only two that are meriting lane closures at this time.

Jahns is hopeful that the closure at milepost 33 could be rectified in a shorter amount of time due to ITD crews already working on a median barrier project in the area. If that project were to receive extra funding, crews could tackle the potholes after finishing their main work on the median in the spring/summer.

Your standard potholes form, especially in the spring, as a result of rapidly warming temperatures following weeks of prolonged cold.

“Whenever you have a freeze/thaw cycle, then things just warm up suddenly, and then you get some moisture, it just saturates the base of the road — makes it really tender — and makes it more susceptible to when traffic is hitting that road and wearing it down to make that hole,” Jahns explained.

When driving through either of the closure areas, motorists are advised to use caution and keep an eye out for maintenance crews, as they are out in full force. It was just over a week ago that a suspected drunk driver entered the work zone at milepost 33 and hit a loader that was being used to fix a pothole last Sunday.

“Between storms, when we aren’t plowing, this is what we do,” Jahns said. “We patch potholes, we put up delineators again, we take care of broken signs, so we are still out working.”