As water recedes, teeth-rattling potholes remain

Stephen Curran

Friday, Jan. 14, 2005 | 9:31 a.m.

The wet weather that has blanketed the Las Vegas Valley in past weeks has taken a toll on area roads and has made getting around a little bumpier, city and county officials said.

Water damage was responsible for many of the potholes and cracks that have sprung up on valley roads, as moisture seeped underneath pavement and caused new, or worsened existing, damage, said Jerry Walker, region sanitation manager for the Las Vegas Department of Field Operations.

Walker estimated his department had spent nearly 200 man-hours filling potholes on city streets since mid-December. The older roads required the most work.

One of the worst patches is the nearly one-mile stretch of Decatur Boulevard between Meadows Lane and Sahara Avenue, an already bumpy area Walker said may have been made worse by rainy weather.

The traffic-clogged street had been difficult for city crews to repair. The sheer number of vehicles combined with the road's age made it dangerous for workers to perform the repairs, which would have slowed traffic to a virtual crawl, he said.

"Decatur is an old road that has much more capacity than it was designed for," Walker said. "We're just trying to hold it together."

City engineers in 2001 found that the road endures about 56,000 vehicles every day, Jorge Cervantes, an assistant traffic engineer, said.

Four-lane roads like that part of Decatur Boulevard routinely see between 50,000 and 60,000 cars a day, Cervantes said, but the aging asphalt makes that road particularly bumpy and more prone to water-related damage.

Continued rain prevented crews from making scheduled repairs Sunday, Walker said. But crews have since patched many of its potholes and smaller cracks. Walker said crews would continue working on the street one Sunday per month in an effort to maintain it.

A thorough overhaul of that portion of Decatur is expected to begin sometime this year, he added.

Ongoing repairs to the roadways will be paid through the department's roughly $4 million annual maintenance budget, which is also used to pay salaries and overtime charges stemming from debris cleanups after large storms, Walker said.

Clark County Public Works also earmarks a portion of its $13 million annual budget to clean and repair streets dirtied or damaged in flood seasons, Bobby Shelton, a spokesman for the county agency, said.

County workers on Wednesday had not yet started repairing portions of Topaz Street, which was significantly damaged Dec. 29 when water covered the roadway, making it impassable to repair crews, he said.

Shelton said he did not know how much the repair would cost or when it would begin because the road was still covered. The large-scale flooding in northwest Las Vegas in August 2003 cost the county about $75,000 to clean and repair the area, he said.

On Wednesday afternoon, Topaz Street south of Warm Springs Road was still closed, as were several additional roadways, including Decatur Boulevard south of Interstate 215 and Jones Boulevard between I-215 and Robindale Road. Until they're cleared of water and debris, there's no telling what damage, if any, there has been to the roads.

What is clear is that even relatively minor damage can wreak havoc on traffic flow. Last Wednesday, traffic slowed to a crawl along Jones Boulevard near the beltway during the morning rush hour, as construction workers working for the county repaired a pothole on the highway's northbound lane.

Rain had undermined the roadway and had caused the pothole to form sometime last Tuesday night, Derek Caldwell, a general foreman from the construction company currently widening that stretch of the road, said. The pothole occurred along the shoulder of the road, sinking a 12-foot long strip of asphalt.

At its widest, the pothole jutted two feet into the travel lane.

"There's plenty of room to get by, unless they're driving too fast and not paying attention, which is usually the case," Caldwell said as he supervised the repairs.

Crew members from Diamond Construction began repairs to the road Wednesday morning. Within 30 minutes they had filled the hole with dirt, pounded it down and topped it off with a temporary asphalt mix.

Shelton said there are no county rules establishing a timeframe for responding to calls for road repairs. The county does try to respond within an hour and more jobs are completed within a day, he said.

When the damage occurs in the middle of a roadway construction project, it is the responsibility of the private contractor performing the work to maintain and repair the road, Shelton said.

"The roadway belongs to (the construction company) as long as it's under contract," he said. "If it's within the city limits, we'll notify the city."

Caldwell, the construction foreman at the scene, had a different interpretation of who was responsible. Because he said rain had caused the damage, not his crew, he claimed it was not solely the company's duty to repair the damage.

"But the county asked Diamond to do it, so we're going to do it," Caldwell said.

This time when the area dries out, it will again be up to Diamond Construction to repair the damage to the road and the construction site. But Shelton said if the county's crews are available to help out, they will.

That's good news for motorists because last week's pothole had caused several reports of flat tires, Shelton said. Nevada law states public agencies are not responsible for hazards under their jurisdictions, if they do not know about them.

Sgt. Tracy McDonald of Metro Police's Traffic Investigation Section agreed, saying he only remembered "one or two" accidents caused by potholes in his 24 years in uniform.

"It just doesn't happen," McDonald said. "I don't remember seeing it more than a couple times in all the accidents I've investigated. Usually it punctures a tire. We just don't have the sinkholes like in Florida or the (large) potholes like New York City."

McDonald said dispatchers, who later notify county or city public works, are advised to tell drivers with flat tires caused by curbs or potholes to contact their insurance companies. Officers rarely respond to calls from drivers whose cars are damaged by potholes, he said.

"We could be getting 50 calls a day, but I wouldn't hear about it," McDonald said of the reports received by Metro dispatchers.

When they do receive flat tires, many valley drivers end up at stores like the Big O Tires in the 10000 block of West Charleston Boulevard managed by Mike Williams.

While shallow potholes are not solely responsible for flat tires, Williams said they can worsen existing impact breaks on the tires' sidewalls. He could not pinpoint whether or not he sees a spike during wet weather, but estimated he sees customers replacing tires gone flat after hitting a pothole at least once a day.

"That's probably the biggest reason we replace a tire," Williams said. "If you hit it just right you can cause an impact break. Most of the time the customer doesn't even know what happened."

Meanwhile the holes and cracks in the road are deep enough to get business owners on that bumpy stretch of Decatur Boulevard talking.

Louise Lauber, who owns Lou's Diner in the 400 block of South Decatur Boulevard, said the bumps are enough to make her dread her weekly trip to her bank, near Decatur and Charleston boulevards.

Having an apartment behind her restaurant, Lauber said she is lucky not to drive that stretch of road on a daily basis.

"It's just so rough," Lauber said. "It's horrible. It's got big dips all over it."

Debbie Shelton, a dog groomer at the Hair of the Dog Groomer, also in the 400 block of Decatur, said her customers routinely ask her for alternate routes to get to her business.

Like Lauber, Shelton, who is not related to the county's Bobby Shelton, said she also has an apartment near her job and does not routinely drive on Decatur Boulevard. She does question why all the repairs are necessary.

"I hear it mentioned all the time," she said. "They've torn it up and fixed it then torn it up and fixed it. It's repairs on top of repairs."