Mild winter spawns rough roads

Thinking it might be my imagination, or that my 10-year-old car just complains more than it should when forced to navigate rough terrain, I dropped by the Bangor Public Works department to ask if the city’s streets were really as bad as they seemed.

Matt Oakes, a mild-mannered foreman for the department, just smiled and shook his head when I posed the question.

“No, it’s not your imagination,” said Oakes, a man who seems to have made a grudging peace with the fact that all of his hard work keeps coming apart at the seams these days. “We’ve never seen the roads in such poor shape at this time of the year.”

Unless you’re a snowmobiler, skier or ice-fishing enthusiast, you’ve probably celebrated the unseasonable mildness of this past winter, the fifth-warmest we’ve ever had. But the freakish winter does have a major downside, Oakes said, one whose road-ravaging effects have only begun to surface.

“The roads are in rough shape now,” he said, “but I’m expecting them to be a lot worse in the next few weeks.”

That’s especially bad news for the folks who happen to live on Church Road, which is in miserable shape, or drivers who use Outer Essex Street, which has not wintered well, to say the least. Finson Road is a mess, he said, and even some of the smaller side streets that rarely suffer significant damage have been hard hit this winter – sorry about that, you residents of Manners Avenue.

“And if you ride out Ohio Street,” Oakes cautioned, “there’s a frost heave just beyond the railroad tracks that will send you right through the roof of your car if you’re not careful.”

The problem, of course, has been the winter’s persistent cycle of freezing and thawing. Instead of the ground being locked in ice throughout the winter, this winter’s frost has been buckling and breaking up roads every time the next warm and rainy spell comes along to melt it.

“Consequently, we’re seeing trenches, frost heaves we’ve never seen before,” said Oakes.

The department’s work crews have been battling the heaves and potholes the entire winter, a job that traditionally doesn’t begin in earnest until the ice starts disappearing from the lakes. And none of their hard work stays put. Sand meant to level out the deep dips is washed away in no time, along with the truckloads of cold patch. And don’t get Oakes started on the threat posed by all the tractor-trailer trucks that, prohibited from using I-395, are forced each day to snake their way through city streets that were never meant to carry that kind of weight.

“The damage those trucks are causing is a very big concern for us,” he said. “When the roads need a major rehab, who’s going to pay for it?”

With the worst of the pothole season yet to come, Oakes begs the indulgence of drivers, pleads for their patience. His experience tells him, however, that he and his crews won’t get much of either. The angry complaint calls will soon pour in, perhaps in unprecedented numbers, each from someone who will swear there is no worse pothole in the world than the one he must keep bashing through each day.

While Oakes has learned to take the name-calling, the mere mention of a potentially wet few weeks ahead makes him wince.

“A dry spring,” he said with a sigh, “now that would be beautiful.”