Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey urged patience over the coming weeks as city crews work tirelessly to fill the growing number of potholes plaguing city streets.
Potholes have become a source of frustration for many across the Twin Cities this winter. Frey joined city officials Tuesday to announce a financial allocation allowing to bring on addition public works crews to work overtime, including on weekends, to fill potholes.
"I've directed Public Works Director Margaret Anderson Kelliher and her whole public works team to try to move as quickly as possible, with as many crews as possible, with additional overtime hours and weekend hours to make sure we are filling as many of the potholes as we can while we wait for permanent fix," Frey said.
The immediate fix, according to Frey, is not a permanent one due to the cold patch solution crews are limited to at the moment.
Kelliher said they city will do about 250 tons of cold patch repairs this year.
"The issue is cold patch is more porous, it still allows water through and with the freeze-thaw cycle, often those filled potholes will pop-up again. It's kind of a repeated process until we get the hot patch in our hands."
The hot patch mixture comes from an asphalt plant in St. Paul which historically has not opened until April 1. Once that hot patch available, the plan is to fill 200 potholes a day in Minneapolis.
"That process is the hot patch, compacting the hot patch, and making sure it stays down," added Kelliher.
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This winter has been particularly difficult when it comes treating potholes according to Joe Paumen. Director, Transportation Maintenance & Repair.
"In a typical year we see potholes. We see a few starting to develop in January and then we see a majority of them in the spring," Paumen said. "What's atypical or different about this year is in spite of the fact that we're approaching record snowfall numbers, we have had temperature wise a more mild winter. So we saw many back-to-back freeze-thaw cycles in January."
Those freeze-thaw cycles lead to an abnormally higher number of potholes to begin the year.
"We'd typically start patching potholes in February and March. We began that much earlier in January this year," added Paumen.
Cold patch is factored into the city's snow budget with Kelliher saying Tuesday the city has spent more than last year on snow removal and mitigation, without giving a concrete number.
Minneapolis typically spends $1.3 million to $1.5 million on street repairs.
"Those are the types of street repairs that are more reactive," Kelliher said. "So a pothole is a reactive street repair. We're going out there and fixing it. We'll probably add to than an additional $1 million this year."
City officials are asking the public to report potholes through the city's website.
"We don't magically know where the potholes are," Kelliher said. "We need people to tell us how long the pothole is, how deep it is, and where it is. We have an order or operations in how we fill these potholes. If the pothole is more of a dangerous pothole that it could cause damage, that goes to the top of the list."