A ‘Holey’ Mess : City Crews Strain to Fill In Those Ubiquitous Potholes

Bobby Samm, 51, performs his work like a master craftsman. After maneuvering his three-ton dump truck between cars parked on a narrow residential street near MacArthur Park, he positions his load of 2,000 pounds of sizzling asphalt and rock within inches of the day’s first job: a six-foot-wide pothole filled with five inches of stagnant water, Styrofoam cups, a hubcap and spark plugs.

After sweeping out the hole, Samm and his partner, George Thomas, also 51, deposit a pile of 350-degree asphalt around the hole. Using a steel rake, a broom and an 800-pound roller to compact the asphalt, Samm fills the hole with the long, sweeping strokes of a painter.

“Most people like to watch us work, but the public does have its prejudices,” Samm said while pausing to mop his forehead. “If you’re late for work, you probably aren’t going to be too happy to see me, even if you’re the one who reported the pothole and I’m fixing it. But there’s a certain satisfaction this kind of work gives you. Out here I can sing to myself. Very rarely do I go to the same place and have to repair the same holes.”

Within half an hour’s time, the pothole, which one onlooker said almost ripped out the undercarriage of a speeding police car, is filled. Samm and Thomas drive off to another of the 45 to 60 holes they fill each average work day.

With 25 two-man crews in the Los Angeles bureau of street maintenance working on more than 7,600 miles of streets in the city, maintenance workers have their hands full. City officials estimate that they repair 15,000 potholes a month.

It’s a seemingly hopeless task, aggravated by the pounding of winter rains and heavy city buses. But city officials say they are making progress.

Two years ago, the city’s Department of Public Works launched “Operation Pothole” to encourage citizens to call a special hot line to report the street nuisances. The program was so successful, Board of Public Works President Maureen Kindel said, that more than 40,000 holes were filled in a month, compared to the usual 15,000.

“As an L.A. commuter I’m out there driving every day,” Kindel said. “Operation Pothole was born out of my frustration with our streets. The program is just a more effective way of getting the public involved identifying potholes. It helps us utilize our resources more effectively, because the simple fact is, we need our workers out there filling potholes rather than driving around looking for them.”

The city launched Phase 2 of Operation Pothole last week and, since then, work crews have been out filling and patching the holes reported by callers. Kindel said the second phase of the program was initiated when Mayor Tom Bradley recently complained to her about the condition of the city’s streets.

1,000 Calls First Day

She suggested that he and City Council officials spend a few hours answering the phones that the road department maintains to answer complaints from the public. They did, and Bradley and other officials answered more than 1,000 calls the first day.

It will take more than phone calls to complete the task.

Gary Whittington, general superintendent of the street maintenance bureau, said that roughly 40% of pothole complaints are about the 1,750 miles of roads in downtown Los Angeles.

Experts say a city street should be resurfaced every 25 years. Several years ago, under budgetary pressure, city officials decided that streets would be resurfaced only once every 130 years, said Edward D. Longely, director of the maintenance bureau. Recent allocations of federal and state funds, however, have led to permitting resurfacing every 50 years, he said.

“Thanks to additional state funding we’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel,” Longley said. “But the work can be a little frustrating. Resurfacing all the city’s streets would cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 billion. That’s money we just don’t have. We just have to do everything we can to maintain the integrity of the pavement and keep it safe. “

With federal funds from a Capital Improvement Project, more than $5.5 million has been earmarked for resurfacing major city streets, such as Broadway between 1st and 9th streets downtown, during the 1985-1986 fiscal year, city officials said. Another $10 million has been set aside for the widening and rebuilding of city streets, bridges and storm drains.