PUBLISHED: 04-13-09

Scoop in the Loop

Pothole call to action

Chicago’s pothole situation has gotten so bad this year that some residents are going to extreme measures to take care of the problem.
On April 8, a group of residents of the West Side Austin neighborhood banded together to patch up their pothole-riddled streets that the city seemed to have long forgotten about repairing.

Members of the South Austin Coalition purchased pavement mix and used shovels, rakes and a push roller to patch up potholes on the 4800 block of West Van Buren Street, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Austin isn’t the only neighborhood afflicted with excessive pothole problems, either.

Anyone who has driven, biked or even walked along Chicago’s streets this year must have noticed by now how bad the pothole situation has gotten. On some blocks, it seems like there’s actually more street surface area covered in potholes than not.

It’s gotten so bad that Kentucky Fried Chicken has offered to fix the city’s potholes in exchange for plastering its logo on the repaired pavement, and Mayor Daley is actually considering the offer, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

In Englewood, residents who were fed up with complaining about enormous potholes covering their streets and repeatedly calling the city asking for them to be repaired, took a different approach and scheduled a protest on April 6.

But, miraculously, Chicago Department of Transportation workers showed up to fix the holes just moments before the protest was to start.

The would-be protesters, organized by Action Now, released a statement a few days before the planned demonstration. The group cited concerns about the amount of money the city was spending on repaving roads near potential Olympic sites and beautifying downtown, while residents elsewhere in the city are damaging their cars because of the massive potholes.

“Action Now members and community residents have tried calling 311, yet still nothing gets done,” the statement said. “We’re tired of waiting.”

City officials swear the timing was nothing more than a coincidence, but the whole thing did just so happen to overlap with the visit of the International Olympic Committee team that was in town checking out the city’s bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. That kind of makes it seem less like a coincidence to me, but who knows? I’ll give the city the benefit of the doubt on that one.

Like many Chicagoans, I really don’t care how potholes get fixed, who does it or what logos might be on top of them, as long as I don’t blow a tire or break an axle trying to drive over them.

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