Ohio's engineers are building better roads, but the state's pothole problems are widening and deepening. And as WKSU's M.L. Schultze reports for Ohio Public Radio, an expert on both issues says the reasons are time and money.
Shad Sargand heads the Ohio Research Institute for Transportation and the Environment, and he has a lot of respect for the roads engineers have been building for the last 10 to 15 years.
The problem, he said, is that people are driving on roads built 50 years ago. And while some of the potholes showing up this spring are surface problems, others begin well below that and require better drainage, re-laying of the subsurface and other, more expensive fixes.
"But if you make a mistake and you say, 'OK, even though the bottom is bad and I want to fix it from the top,'" Sargand said, "that is a waste of money, because it will go back to the same place that you started it pretty quickly."
Yet, he said local governments , strapped for cash after last year's harsh winter , may have settled for top-down repairs—meaning even bigger problems this year.