A bump in the road

Call it a pothole. Call it a chuck hole.\nOr call it a nuisance.\nWhatever you call it, the pesky depressions are popping up all over town.\nIU and the city of Bloomington have been cursed this year with plentiful amounts of potholes and everybody seems to have the same sentiment -- potholes are a pain.\nPotholes are caused by the freezing and thawing of trapped water under the road that seeps through cracks in asphalt. Add to the mix cars and other vehicles, and the road eventually erodes. The asphalt begins to sink, and the road begins to crack.\nPotholes, although small compared to the size of most vehicles, can cause major damage to vehicles and drivers.\nEarl Colson, assistant street superintendent for Bloomington's street department, said if a hole is bad enough, it can cause minor tire and rim damage and even major damages such as knocking out a vehicle's alignment. \nDavid Hurst, director of IU's Campus Division, said the damage can be costly.\n"The very least damage a pothole can cause is popping a hubcap out," Hurst said. "The worst can cause a tire to blow."\nIU junior Jennifer Evans knows first-hand how potholes can cause damage to cars, having lately battled potholes on Walnut Street, between 10th and 11th Streets.\n"They are tearing up my car." Evans said. "My steering is messed up now. Everytime I turn left, it makes a bad squeaking noise."\nThe repeated snowfalls this winter have not helped with the problem on campus. "Every time it has snowed this season, we have had to apply salt and sand to the streets and that allows the water to penetrate deeper into the asphalt," Hurst said. "It's very destructive." \nIU's Campus Division has already begun to tackle the pothole problem on campus. The Campus Division workers are split up into four crews, with each crew designated to cover one-fourth of IU's campus. Each crew has to search for potholes and record their locations. By Tuesday, crew members expect to have a list of every pothole located within their area.\nBut not all streets within IU's campus are IU-owned streets. Bloomington owns many streets leading into campus, leaving those streets to be fixed by the Bloomington street department. \n"Roughly 75 percent of streets leading into campus are owned by Bloomington," Hurst said. \nSo far this year, the streets have been patched with cold mix. The Bloomington street department bought between 60 to 80 tons of cold mix and has already used three-fourths of it. \n"Cold mix is basically like a band-aid," Hurst said. \nOn days when patching has been possible, Bloomington's street department has been patching on average 150 to 200 holes a day with cold mix. \nHot mix repairs pot holes better than cold mix because it has the ability to cool and then harden. Cold mix stays flexible and is not as sturdy. \nPot hole repairs using hot mix will begin once the cold weather ends, and this can be as early as mid-March. The company that supplies Campus Division with black top has not opened yet, leaving the crew members to use cold mix. Bloomington's street department is facing the same dilemma. "Hot mix is not produced until late March or early April," said Colson. "It is not cost-efficient to produce during cold weather."\nCampus Division is hoping for the weather to clear up soon to begin patching up the streets. "Hopefully everything will be patched in time for commencement," Hurst said.\nBut until then, the pot holes will remain a pain.\n"This has been a never-ending battle," Colson said.