Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Now that Winter is virtually over, it's time to fix the Potholes!

I must first say that I really do love living in Minneapolis. It's a great place to be in, and several magazines have shown how 'cool' the city is.  The April issue of Men's Journal said "Minneapolis is lauded as the "Best Place to Live in a Big City Designed for Getting Outside” and the editors cite Minneapolis’ parks, Chain of Lakes, large biking community (#1 biking city in America, according to Bicycling Magazine), and numerous farmers markets as the reasons"

Minneapolis was even voted as The Gayest City of America by The Advocate magazine, but all of this wains in comparison in how the Twin Cities is going to recover from all the potholes we endured from the 5th Snowiest Winter of all time, according to long time  Meteorologist, Paul Douglas.

Street crews are preparing to repair potholes, but is it already too late? The city of Minneapolis has awarded MNDot an extra $1M for pothole funding. It is hard to drive down any street as you literally have to swerve to miss the holes because how deep they are, and if you do hit one, wondering what kind of damage it has done to your car. One lady interviewed said she has already replaced two tires due to running over potholes.

The repairs that MNDot is doing are great, but how long will they last? I know from years past, the temporary repairs lasted a long time, but surrounding the repair, other holes emerged. I'm not sure if it's funny or sad that KSTP.com linked up with See Click Fix Maps to map and report potholes in and around the Minneapolis/St. Paul area.

Yes, MNDot is working hard to repair the potholes, but we need a more permanent fix instead of a temporary fix. It's going to be only a matter of time before these repairs give way to the coming rains that we will receive.

I should be happy that Minneapolis didn't make Gadling's Worst Potholes in the World list two years ago. This problem does show that potholes aren't just a Minnesota problem, doing a quick Google Search I see headlines such as: "Vermont's worst pothole season", "Seattle catching up to record number of potholes", even Scotland spent £3million over five years for damage and injuries caused by potholes.

One just hopes that the pothole repairs will be better than this years snow removal.