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Epic Potholes of the 2011 "Season"!

IT'S THAT TIME OF YEAR.....


WHERE WE ASK, WHAT ROADWAY IS NOT A MINEFIELD OF POTHOLES?!


post your best, or uh, worst potholes here. Or give props to the sections of road you know to be pothole free (laugh along with me folks)


Don't forget to fill out the 311 pothole form after you complain on the internet:

http://www.city.pittsburgh.pa.us/mayor/html/pothole.html


..so the city can put a genuinely useful patch on it!


and, maybe check against past epic pothole threads:


2010: http://bike-pgh.org/bbpress/topic/epic-potholes-of-the-2010-season


I swear I made a 2009 thread but maybe I was wrong!


caitlin
2011-01-25 21:19:59

yesterday i took note that all of friendship ave from the park to the school is a total mess and has been for years. at least get the intersection at the park cleared up a bit. eeehh


caitlin
2011-01-25 21:24:29

i ride along that stretch of friendship most every night. it's mostly endurable (if there's no traffic) up until that convenience store (heading northwest). after that, i either have to hold on tight and pray, or cross the double yellow and hope for the best.


i also ride winebiddle between friendship and liberty, and i can't swerve enough to avoid a seriously jarring jaunt.


liberty and negley remain my most hated road surfaces, but i'm happy with how ellsworth has held up so far. at least west of aiken. on the other side, all bets are off.


hiddenvariable
2011-01-25 21:29:23

coral is also a mess for a block or two after, i think, fairmount? like the entire street from one side to another.


ugh negley from penn to just past the giant eagle parking lot entrance.


i cant think of any one giant pothole these days, just big stretches of little deep ones.


45th going downhill still dangerous as hell too! be careful!


caitlin
2011-01-25 21:50:56

@caitlin - i don't think negley between centre and 5th is any better!


also, the potholes on wightman (just north of forbes) i mentioned in the 311 thread look pretty 'epic'.


salty
2011-01-25 22:15:41

Y'mean new potholes, or unpatched messes from last winter? Perrysville below NCharles hasn't gotten any serious maintenance since 2008.


And East Street inbound between Mt Pleasant and All Traffic Must Turn Right must have three dozen nasty separations between pavement slabs. I doubt it's gotten any attention since they put the road there in the late 1980s.


stuinmccandless
2011-01-25 22:59:53

Penn ave outbound between downtown and the strip. I'll definitely submit that one!


rubberfactory
2011-01-25 23:03:23

Thanks for getting this topic started Caitlin. I haven't found one yet that has reached "epic" proportions, but my eyes are peeled.


scott
2011-01-25 23:28:33

The big hill of Greenfield Ave, either going down to Second, or coming up looks like it got shelled by artillery. Dozens of >1 ft (wide/deep) holes.


dwillen
2011-01-25 23:35:05

+1 to what dwillen says.

Plus, you have to either swerve left into traffic or right into loose bits of gravel to avoid these deep holes. I only go down it, though ;-)


pseudacris
2011-01-26 01:02:23

Panther Hollow Road. Because, y'know, it wasn't enough of a death trap before...


jeg
2011-01-26 02:00:09

+1 on Panther Hollow Road. Also bad is Beacon between its junction with Hobart and where the bike lane starts.


There's a decent sized pothole on Meyran in Oakland, too. I think it appeared when there was a water main break there.


kgavala
2011-01-26 02:04:35

so i think that this year, the potholes are not as epic in size as they are in number.


there is a MASSIVE one on negley in the right hand land right before you get to ELB going towards penn.

And!!


City wants to know location of potholes

Thursday, February 10, 2011

By Joe Smydo, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The city of Pittsburgh wants to know about those potholes.


Public Works Director Rob Kaczorowski today asked residents to report potholes at www.pittsburghpothole.com or the 311 line. Non-residents may call 412-255-CITY.


Complaints should be as detailed as possible; street addresses, intersections and landmarks will help workers get to the right places.


The city said it will attempt to address complaints with five days, but hopes to respond to many within 72 hours. Public works crews on two eight-hour shifts will be filling potholes as long as the weather cooperates.


"Residents need to be aware that crews can only use cold-patch material in this weather, which means that potholes will only hold the fill if they are two-inches deep or more," Mr. Kaczorowski said. "As soon as the weather gets warmer and more durable hot-patch becomes available, we will be able to more effectively fill all potholes."


Potholes top the list of complaints to Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's 311 line. As of this morning, public works had handled 234 pothole complaints for the season.


If the city receives a complaint about a pothole on a state road, it will refer the caller to PennDOT.


Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11041/1124472-147.stm#ixzz1DZeMXz5L


caitlin
2011-02-10 16:27:31

i agree caitlin, it's not that one pothole covers the street, but that the street is covered in many potholes.


i ride morewood every day, and every day it's worse. i have to give myself a sizable cushion if there's a car in front of me, and i have to keep my eyes on the ground to avoid wrecking, it seems.


hiddenvariable
2011-02-10 16:51:23

I hate to always be the cynic, but what city do the Public Works people live in that they need people to call them and tell them where potholes are? They aren't that hard to notice.


Here are some streets to start on, you may have heard of them. Penn, Liberty, Fifth, Forbes, Carson.


bradq
2011-02-10 19:01:53

@Brad: I reckon the streets where the public works officials live are in much better shape than the rest of the city.


But, I'm a cynic, too.


bjanaszek
2011-02-10 19:07:02

Negley...all of Negley...


lou-m
2011-02-10 19:08:32

my favorite part of the pothole fixing process is the city marked dump truck that stops in the middle of the road with no warning and two dudes jump out of it and shovel a patch into the hole, even in the middle of intersections.


caitlin
2011-02-10 19:38:21

well, there is a huge pothole on my street, hatfield st, and i don't imagine that they would know about it. i guess that means no public works people live on my street


erok
2011-02-10 19:40:32

i pretty much filled out a 311 for them to drive down hays and fill in all the potholes. ill give an update if it happens in less than a week!


caitlin
2011-02-10 19:46:59

Here are some streets to start on, you may have heard of them. Penn, Liberty, Fifth, Forbes, Carson.


I think some of those may be maintained by PennDOT, not the city. Penn Avenue east of Penn Circle (and around the 31st Street bridge), Fifth east of Mellon Park, Forbes west of Beeler, and all of Carson Street seem to be PennDOT's, according to the city's salt route map.


The city needs public reports to find potholes on minor streets, and given that, it makes more sense to depend on public reports for major streets too, instead of getting some employees to drive around looking for problems (or having them automatically fix problems they notice while driving to work). It's fair, and should be effective at getting the worst problems fixed quickest.


steven
2011-02-10 19:52:30

@caitlin - I actually don't mind the holes on Hays.... it slows the idiots down a bit.


quizbot
2011-02-10 20:32:15

I hadn't considered the PennDOT angle.


I'm not saying that calling in holes on side streets doesn't make more sense than just driving around and looking for them. Only that given that the main streets of town that you almost can't avoid driving on are in such terrible condition that it seems there is more enough obvious work to get started with.


bradq
2011-02-10 20:32:46

Negley...all of Negley...


Actually, north of Hampton Avenue, the surface is just awesome. Granted, it's only two blocks....


bjanaszek
2011-02-10 20:48:30

PennDOT potholes can be reported to 1-800-Fix-Roads.


swalfoort
2011-02-10 20:55:18

good point quizbot. shoot.


although there are chunks of asphalt in front of my house that either came from a hole or someone put there?


caitlin
2011-02-10 21:29:40

right by (stans? reynas? can't remember, its right within those blocks on penn though), there used to be one of those slippery construction plates, now there's a 2 inch deep pothole.


rubberfactory
2011-02-10 23:26:42

The Chislett side of Hays has to be one of the narrowest flat streets in the area... people fly down it though as an out from the red light at Black St & Chislett heading south.


What concerns me more than the holes is the surface warping on Hays & Sharp Way... from my understanding, drainage hasn't been addressed around here since the turn of the century prior to this one.


quizbot
2011-02-11 03:09:57

gary always talked about wanting to put in speed bumps. im always surprised at how fast people turn in at my corner... and sometimes pull a big u-turn. or when cops come down really fast the wrong way!


caitlin
2011-02-11 18:26:09

Has anyone seen the epic earthquake-movie-scale displaced slab of concrete on the inbound side of the Charles Anderson Bridge (by Schenley Pool)?


A 311 call last year taught me that the bridges are all PennDOT, but the DPW was kind enough to put a barricade atop it to guide people away.


alnilam
2011-02-11 19:00:40

Ellsworth. As always....pretty much the section between Aiken and Shady Ave, and especially the section between Negley and Shady Ave. It's like a friggin' moonscape.


greenbike
2011-02-12 16:27:21



reddan
2011-02-15 13:34:53

Nice comic reddan!


Not that it's a main road by any means, but going up the hill, North Fairmount has a nice "ditch" in the middle of the road. It's really hard to avoid in a car. It's mostly due to on-going water line problems under the road. I'll try to get a pic of it later.


gimppac
2011-02-15 15:18:08

braddock from Penn north is crap (don't know south of penn). hubby doesn't like _driving_ down it. there's one between kelly and bennet I think, in one of the tire tracks that's invisible until you're in it. One day it will win.


ejwme
2011-02-15 16:34:01

im hoping that with the entire right lane of negley being utterly destroyed, they'll just go ahead and make it a bike lane :)


then repave it.


caitlin
2011-02-15 16:41:46

I know this thread is mostly about the city but after restarting my bike commute this morning, I'd like to nominate all of Wilkinsburg. Ye gods. Potholes with occasional specks of road.


jamesk
2011-02-15 20:33:04

according to an email from the city, my negley reported holes were filled today...


caitlin
2011-02-15 21:20:29

Beechwood Boulevard. Holy sh*t.


atleastmykidsloveme
2011-02-15 21:40:48

Not really a hole, and not new to this season, but I'm getting damn tired of that big whomping lump in the curb lane of the 40th Street Bridge, southbound, about 2/3 of the way across. I'm half tempted to ride down there with a big hammer and chisel and beat the crap out of it myself. It almost sent me flying earlier tonight. It's like a cement truck took a dump there and nobody bothered to clean it up.


stuinmccandless
2011-02-16 03:20:11

Last night when I started up Reynolds from Mellon Park, it looked like an epic gusher (water main break) was forming between Beechwood and Selwyn.


pseudacris
2011-02-16 11:57:34

city email was a lie!! holes are still present!


caitlin
2011-02-16 19:51:01

All of South Millvale is terrible. You can see the cobblestones underneath. Liberty in Bloomfield is awful in the sharrows and Ellsworth between Negley and Shady are getting worse and worse every day


timh
2011-02-23 00:59:49

i saw independent contractors filling holes the other day. it was weird.... but i guess the city has just farmed out the job to someone else?


caitlin
2011-03-07 19:05:15

Massive pothole at Fifth Ave and Robinson, in the far right lane. This is a car-tire blowing pothole.


greenbike
2011-03-11 18:58:45

Must be a big pothole outbound on 5th in the center of the right most lane somewhere before Shady (or maybe even before Highland.. I don't recall). The storm drains weren't working last night and the road was covered in an inch of water. I didn't see it even after I hit it, but I sure felt it. Knocked the lights off my bike too.



Anyone ever invoice the city for a new wheel? :)


If anyone happens to commute down 5th, snap a photo for me. I'd like to see what I hit (and report it to 311).


dwillen
2011-05-19 01:08:09

Wow.


At least you won't have to worry about that sort of thing happening on Panther Hollow rd anymore...


kgavala
2011-05-19 01:20:30

yeesh.


a girl took a spill on S millvale outside of the bookshop today. once we knew she was okay and on her way, I decided it was a good time to report the three big holes in the ground on that road.


rubberfactory
2011-05-19 01:21:43

Need a new wheel before I have to worry about it happening again :)


dwillen
2011-05-19 01:30:23

Re: Panther Hollow Road


QUICK! Someone get out there and paint some bike lanes before they put the dashed white lines back!


jeg
2011-05-19 11:40:49

All of Penn Ave in Garfield going into town. It's been that way for a long time and I hope they're going to do some work on that when the weather breaks. I guess there are more pressing things to spend money on in Garfield, though.


karenin
2011-05-19 19:24:18

Penn Ave at Point Breeze, inbound, a nasty hole.


stuinmccandless
2011-05-19 22:35:15

@dwillen -- sorry to see that wheel...Nothing worse than hitting something that knocks the lights off your bike. Glad you didn't have a blow out.


rocco
2011-05-20 00:50:26

Fifth Ave. just past Robinson---the monster pothole has begun to open up again...whatever patching they did on it back in March is coming apart. Forgot to call 311 on it, now that I think about it.


greenbike
2011-05-20 17:49:56

The one I hit was near Collage on 5th, outbound. Kind of on the right half of the right most lane. It is very deep, maybe only 2' across though. Not sure how I managed not to get my front wheel stuck in it.


dwillen
2011-05-20 18:06:59

@Karenin I heard rumors that they were going to repave Penn through Garfield last summer... obviously didn't happen. I actually take Coral on my commute down to the cemetery because between traffic, potholes, ridged pavement and car doors I can't stand that part of penn ave.


dmtroyer
2011-05-25 13:51:28

I 311'd one on Cedar Ave on the NSide, southbound just before East Ohio. Not a gargantuan hole, just big enough to throw someone or maybe bend a rim.


stuinmccandless
2011-05-26 17:48:35