Crumbling streets get fewer resources to fix them

By Bill Torpy

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Yes, metro Atlanta’s roads are as bad as you think.

Mother Nature and the recession have done a number on them in recent years: Drought. Floods. Freezing. Thawing. Dwindling budgets. Aging streets. Long-delayed repairs. Add that all together and you have Asphalt Armageddon.

It’s not only the city’s streets falling apart. Public works supervisors in DeKalb, Cobb and Gwinnett counties all say their crews are running ragged trying to keep up with complaints.

In late 2008, Atlanta completed a study that found nearly half of its 1,705 miles of streets were in disrepair and needed repaving. Of that, almost 500 miles had been ruled unsatisfactory before 2003. And conditions have worsened since.

“It’s a combination of the age of our roads and a lack of our ability to keep up with those roads,” said Michael Cheyne, Atlanta’s interim Public Works commissioner. “It’s indicative of the issue that we’re doing more with less.”

“Less” is the operative word. While Atlanta’s Public Works Department has 700 employees, just 13 workers are assigned to repairing the city’s streets — three two-man crews that fill potholes and seven workers who handle larger calls, of which there are about 300 per week. Public works also handles fleet maintenance, garbage pickup, bridge maintenance and other duties.

Three years ago, Atlanta had twice as many crews working roads, but has slashed the number due to budget cuts.

Motorists in the city have noticed.

“The city has gone to hell in a handbasket as far as the streets are concerned; I’ve never seen so many potholes,” said Jim Walters, an IT consultant who works near Georgia Tech and has traded in his BMW convertible for a 1997 Honda Accord. “It doesn’t make sense to drive a new car around Atlanta.”

Walters said he learned his lesson when his sporty car struck a deep pothole in Buckhead, leading to a blown tire, two replaced rims and $1,100 in repairs.

Roads have gotten markedly worse in the past five years, he said. Walters said he has called the city several times to report a deteriorating section on 10th Street near Georgia Tech, “But when you call, you get a runaround.”

The city tries to fill reported potholes within 72 hours, Cheyne said. But the clock doesn’t start ticking until after an inspector goes to the scene. Sometimes, he admits, that takes time.

'The worst I’ve seen’

Filling potholes has been a high-profile way to measure government services since Henry Ford built Model Ts. Eight years ago, Shirley Franklin came into office as Atlanta mayor and immediately unleashed the “Pothole Posse” as a symbol of a “can-do” city government.

Bill Shelton, Cobb’s road maintenance manager, with four years at the county and 30 years’ experience in Montgomery, knows the drill well.

“We’re front-line people, probably more front line than any other department,” he said. “Everyone knows what a pothole is. Everyone uses that as an example of services provided. People judge your county by how smooth the roads are.”

Carl Glover, director of DeKalb’s Roads and Drainage Division, has been at it for 17 years. Asked about the state of the roads, Glover did not hesitate: “This is the worst I’ve seen in 17 years. The ratings [of the roads] are much higher [worse]. Money and weather are taking a toll.”

The deterioration has worsened in the past year, he said.

“We’ve had some real swings in the weather. There was drought. Then it was real hot, then a lot of rain. A lot of rain. Then cold. Then snow. Then ice. Then it melted. And then some more rain.”

The drought lowered the water table, which helps support roads. Vehicles rolling over them make cracks, which allow water in, which loosens the subsurface. The freezing and thawing speeds up the disintegration.

Five years ago, DeKalb tried to repave 60 miles of its roads each year. Now, it can get to maybe 25, Glover said.

Instead of paving long stretches of road, the county will repave short, deteriorated sections and fill potholes.

“We’re doing more and more of it to extend the life,” he said. “You’re buying a few more years and minimizing the cost. We do what we can with what we’ve got.”

Glover said he has two major paving crews with 12 to 15 workers each; four crews with six to eight workers performing heavy patching; and two pothole crews with three to five workers each.

The county used to get 15 or 20 pothole complaints a day, he said. Now it’s more like 40.

Domino’s Pizza had its 30-minute delivery guarantee. DeKalb promises to fill potholes in 24 hours. “That is about to get changed because of the number of requests,” Glover said. “We’ve had more and more severe defects.”

Rating the roads

There are a lot of ways a road can go bad: Traversal cracking. Longitudinal cracking. Alligator cracking. Potholes. Rutting. Depressions. Upheaval. Oxidation. Each day, Bill Smith, DeKalb’s “road rater,” drives a grid of some of the county’s 2,300 miles of road and fills out dozens of sheets noting “asphalt distress.” It’s an effort to keep track of streets and determine which are worst.

Driving through the historic Scottdale neighborhood, Smith rattled off five imperfections he saw on Reed Street and then stopped, quickly rating the street a 31 (on a scale of 63, which is the worst rating), putting it on the list for repaving, but just barely.

Asked how long it will take before a “31” gets paved, Smith smiled and shrugged.

“Our plate is overflowing,” he said.

Suburban counties like Cobb and Gwinnett are in better shape overall because of generally newer roads.

But a frenetic wave of growth the past 20 years has left them with hundreds of miles of roads in subdivisions and “they’ll all get old at the same time,” said Cobb’s Shelton. He is documenting and rating those roads so the county is not surprised and is ready to deal with them when the time comes for repairs.

“It’s good and it’s bad,” said Kim Conroy, who is in charge of road maintenance for Gwinnett County’s Department of Transportation. “It’s good because we have newer pavement. But it’s starting to show wear.”

The backlog grows

Cobb has seen the wear.

In all of fiscal 2009, the county repaired 756 potholes, Shelton said. During the first six months of this fiscal year, starting last fall, they filled nearly 1,000.

Cobb crews use saws to cut the jagged sides of all potholes to make sure they don’t have to return soon. Shelton also does not like using those large steel plates to cover holes. “We don’t own but four or five plates. I hate to use them. They’re awkward, they rattle. They’re just a pain.”

Atlanta, by contrast, currently has 115 plates in use. It’s a common complaint in the city that “road repairs” simply means dropping a plate on the street.

(All Atlanta’s street repairs are not Public Works’ doing. The city’s Department of Watershed Management has crews digging up and repairing roads for sewer and water work, as do utilities.)

The 2008 Atlanta infrastructure report noted the city had paved 370 miles of streets in the previous 10 years, much of that funded by a “quality of life” bond program approved by voters in 2000. But that funding source is coming to an end. Cheyne said the city is exploring ways to raise money not only for roads, but for other infrastructure upgrades like bridges, sidewalks and lighting.

“We know we have a problem; we know we have a backlog,” he said.

More than $255 million is needed to “eliminate the paving backlog,” according to the report.

Meanwhile, the public grows frustrated.

“How can the city get business to move here if it doesn’t keep up its infrastructure?” asked Brent Sobol, who owns apartments on the city’s southwest side.

He took a reporter on a tour of the Cascade Road area, pointing out crumbling curbs, buckling sidewalks, missing sewer grates, dead trees and ragged roads. Sobol has become something of a serial complaint-maker to the city about such things.

“But these requests go into, I’m convinced, a black hole at City Hall,” he said. “Unless it’s a quick fix. It’s not just the potholes in the streets, it seems like a systemic failure.”

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Pothole horrors: Your turn

Metro area streets are increasingly pocked with potholes, bumps and divots. What’s the worst road in your town? Where’s the biggest pothole? How long has it been a problem? Tell us about the worst roadways in your area. And include a picture if you can. Send an e-mail to AJC reporter Bill Torpy at btorpy@ajc.com.