Another Bump in the Road ... and Another

The great deluge has passed, but motorists now face another challenge: bobbing and weaving around thousands of freshly minted potholes.

At last count, at least 1,200 potholes have opened up on the 7,500 miles of roads in the city of Los Angeles, and the number of pothole complaints has jumped tenfold, according to city officials.

Sufficient concern was expressed that Mayor James K. Hahn -- who is up for reelection in March -- hastily called a news conference Thursday to assure the citizenry that the city would try to fill all its potholes by today.

By the end of last week, about 700 potholes had been fixed. Over the weekend, 48 crews from the city’s Bureau of Street Services worked around the clock in a “blitz” to plug the remaining potholes.

“We’re not going to fix all the potholes in the city; we’re just trying to fix the potholes reported by residents,” said Nazario Sauceda, the city’s assistant director of street services. He and other city maintenance officials planned to meet early today, Sauceda said, to determine whether they had met that goal over the weekend.

There are thousands more potholes countywide. So many, in fact, that officials aren’t bothering to tally them.

And many will have to wait for repair. Collapsed roads and washed-out streets are getting first priority, said Ken Pellman, a spokesman for the county Public Works Department.

“You have to be especially careful of a pothole with water in it -- if driving carelessly you can steer into another lane,” said Xudong Jia, an associate professor of civil engineering at Cal Poly Pomona who studies such things as pavement distress.

Good thing that drivers in Southern California are known for their careful driving and for never performing other tasks -- like reading, phoning, grooming or sleeping -- while operating a motor vehicle.

The roads, by many accounts, have been a mess.

There was the axle-bender near Beverly Boulevard and Normandie Avenue, a crater threatening to swallow compacts close to Figueroa and 8th streets, and a string of fissures on Venice Boulevard at Robertson Boulevard.

A small canyon on the eastbound 101 in the San Fernando Valley launched a half-dozen hubcaps from vehicles, according to one witness.

On the northbound Pasadena Freeway, a geyser erupted in the middle lane, spouting through a crack in the pavement.

On the eastbound 10 at La Cienega Boulevard, a two-foot-long gash sidelined more than 40 cars with chewed up tires, according to the California Highway Patrol and tow truck drivers.

As his truck lugged a crippled Volvo to the body shop, tow driver Yankee Bennett keenly observed: “You can easily lose control of your vehicle. You can get into an accident.”

Brand Boulevard in Glendale “is a complete disaster,” said Robert Fernandez, an instructor for Delta Driving School in Eagle Rock.

Fernandez, who rides shotgun with his students in a Toyota Corolla, said he’s avoiding streets pocked with potholes.

The city’s official explanation for the potholes was to blame the water. If you need a mental picture, just think about the relationship between the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon.

Most roads in Southern California are made of asphalt, which is easier to fix than cement. One of asphalt’s virtues is that it is flexible, allowing it to absorb the daily pounding of Southland traffic. Problem is, asphalt tends to crack over time. During a big rain, water seeps through cracks to the road base, which is made of crushed rocks. When the base erodes, asphalt’s virtue -- its flexibility -- becomes a vice and the whole thing collapses. The result: a pothole.

“Everyone thinks 18-wheelers damage our roads,” said William Robertson, the director of the city’s Bureau of Street Services. “They do to a certain extent, but their weight is spread out over several axles. We get a lot more damage from buses. They only have two axles and do a lot of stopping, so you get a lot of rutting.” Robertson said that crews would concentrate first on what he called “true potholes,” the ones where actual dirt shows through.

Another problem is lack of maintenance on the region’s roads. “When you combine that with the unfathomable increase in traffic, you get potholes,” said Judy Gish, a Caltrans spokeswoman.

Because of recurring budget cuts to transportation, the state’s aging highways and roads have also fallen into disrepair.

Although the recommended cycle for repaving roadways is every 18 to 20 years, counties across cash-strapped California are now waiting longer to repave or maintain streets, according to a survey by the California State Assn. of Counties. In Los Angeles County, the repaving cycle is now about 30 years.

The same November 2004 survey found that 64% of the county’s roads are in “fair to very poor condition.”

As befitting any metropolis that worships the automobile, the political response to the recent pothole pox has been swift.

“You’ve got to own the street,” declared Los Angeles City Councilman Tom LaBonge, explaining his recipe for political longevity. Councilwoman Wendy Greuel learned when running for office in 2002 that it wasn’t the big issues -- education, healthcare and the like -- but the little ones -- cracked sidewalks, gaping potholes and unruly trees -- that most worried her future constituents.

Greuel has since earned the nickname “the pothole queen” for her vigorous efforts to fix every pothole in her district.

Anyone motoring along Broadway in downtown L.A. at noon last Thursday may have noticed a pothole being patched by a city worker who bore an uncanny resemblance to the mayor.

It was.

Hahn donned a fluorescent yellow construction vest and a fresh pair of steel-toed boots, into which he neatly tucked his pinstriped slacks.

He had called a news conference to reveal that the city is doing everything possible to fix its potholes.

Noting that his father, former county Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, was “a pothole killer,” Hahn explained that fixing potholes “is one of those ways to let people know what government is doing.”

The mayor then grabbed the handlebars of a machine called a vibratory plate that mashes down freshly laid asphalt. He managed to hang on like a determined bronco rider until a professional street worker took over to prevent anyone from getting hurt.

Times staff writer Caitlin Liu contributed to this report.