Snowstorm costs: More than $2 million - so far

Tacoma, Pierce County pay big to clear roads, repair many potholes

KRIS SHERMAN AND DAVID WICKERT; kris.sherman@thenewstribune.com david.wickert@thenewstribune.com
Last updated: January 3rd, 2009 02:32 AM (PST)

It took more than $2 million in sand, salt, labor and equipment just to make roads passable and do some cleanup in Tacoma and Pierce County.

The county’s cost: more than $1.4 million, roughly $2 for every man, woman and child. The Tacoma tab so far: $580,317.20.

You can count on it going up. Potholes that emerged when the roads were cleared pockmark streets from Tillicum to Tacoma, Gig Harbor to Graham.

But they’re less easily dealt with. And considerably more costly.

Pothole-patching crews in Tacoma work 12-hour shifts. Trucks rumble out of the city’s asphalt plant on Center Street laden with the elbow grease and raw materials to turn teeth-rattling commutes into relatively smooth rides.

The expansion-contraction physics of what road-work officials call a “freeze-thaw event” left craters of nearly car-swallowing proportions on some streets.

Crews filled one that was at least 5 feet wide on Schuster Parkway last week.

“We’ve had a run on South Tacoma Way that was 30 to 40 feet long,” said Bob Gunther, Tacoma’s asphalt supervisor. That was a freakishly long case of “delamination” in which the top portion of the street eroded, he said.

Crews are filling and patching as quickly as they can, he said. But don’t expect to see every pothole repaired.

Ruts that are only an inch or so deep can jar your car, and they’re also among the peskiest.

If a crew fixes one that small, the patch job will disintegrate with the next cars that pass over it, said Tacoma road-work crew leader Will Knouff.

The result: Crews don’t bother with ’em.

Until New Year’s Day, crews hadn’t had a day off – not even Christmas – for about two weeks, Gunther said.

They don’t know how much work remains. Public Works officials are still assessing the damage, Tacoma spokesman Rob McNair-Huff said this week. They don’t expect they’ll know until mid-January what their assault on the December damage will cost.

Residents remind them every day that road conditions are less than ideal, although no one has filed a damage claim with the city.

“Yes, we’re taking calls about potholes, and they are everywhere,” said Matt Fengler, an assistant division manager in the city’s Public Works department.

When The News Tribune raised the issue on its Web site Monday, several residents wrote to complain about poor road conditions.

“Yakima/Park Ave. between 96th and 98th is bad,” wrote “cclngthr” in a post on the Word on the Street blog. “Pretty deep potholes. The same street also has smaller ruts all the way to 112th street.”

Other readers complained about rough rides on South Tacoma Way, Union Avenue, North 26th Street, South 72nd and 74th streets and several other roads.

“CAUTION near N Pearl st on N 26th right at the entrance to the Safeway,” wrote “rtqueen.” “I thought for sure I would have a flat after that one. …”

There are problems in unincorporated Pierce County, too, said road operations manager Bruce Wagner.

Though the damage wasn’t as bad as it could have been, some county roads remain full of chuckholes, Wagner said.

Especially hard hit are Canyon Road from 72nd to 104th streets, Gem Heights Drive from 163rd to 168th streets, and 120th Street East from Rhodes Lake Road to 214th Avenue.

County crews are applying a temporary “cold mix” to potholes, Wagner said. They’ll do permanent repairs as weather allows, perhaps within a month.

The pothole patrols come on top of a military-style assault on snow and ice between Dec. 17 and Christmas Day in many areas.

In Tacoma, road crews used police officers and Pierce Transit drivers as their eyes on the street, counting on them to identify the worst spots in town, Fengler said.

The city’s snow-busting troops included nine plows, six sanding trucks and six de-icing trucks, Fengler said.

This week, they had six sweepers out daily clearing debris.

Tacoma doesn’t have a snow-removal line item in its overall budget. The Public Works budget absorbed the costs from the December storms.

The priority in Tacoma was keeping arterials and other important roads driveable, especially near fire stations and hospitals and along bus routes, Fengler said.

“We really kept things moving here in the City of Tacoma,” he said.

His comment seemed pointed at Seattle, where residents besieged the city with complaints about uncleared roads and the refusal on environmental grounds to use salt to help melt street ice. Mayor Greg Nickels relented this week, saying salt would be applied in some circumstances during future storms.

The timing of the snowstorms gave many municipalities a break in one way. While it ate through road-work and snow-removal budgets, the “reset” button got hit Jan. 1. Anything else winter throws out of the sky will get cleaned up on the 2009 dime.

That’s especially good news to Pierce County officials, where the nearly $1.5 million cost far eclipsed the roughly $900,000 Wagner thought would be needed in 2008.

Wagner tapped unused money in his 2008 budget to cover the difference.

County road crews, working in 12-hour shifts, plowed more than 22,000 lane-miles in the aftermath of the storms. They also applied more than 4,200 tons of sand and 3,100 tons of salt.

With the snow melted, it’s now the pesky potholes that have road crews’ attention.

In Tacoma, bumpy driving is a year-round part of life for many residents. A street survey shows some 6,400 of Tacoma’s 8,610 residential streets need fixing for potholes, washboarding and other issues.

Reactions to the recent work has varied. Some drivers give workers a thumb’s up, silently thanking them for whatever they can do. Others register displeasure – apparently at road conditions in general – with a different digit.

Road crews, working on main roads, have miles to go in a seemingly never-ending cycle.

“Everything we do now is just temporary. It’s a mild curing asphalt mix,” Gunther said. “We’re hoping to get through the worst of the weather” before longer-term repairs can be made, he added.

And if you want to see even temporary improvements in those pockmarked streets, steer slowly clear of the guys fixing them, Knouff asked.

“Don’t zip around the pothole crews,” he said. It’s unsafe, and it could ultimately slow them down. Kris Sherman: 253-597-8659

David Wickert: 253-274-7341

Originally published: January 3rd, 2009 12:19 AM (PST)