What is the deal with the roads? (Cleveland, Prospect: neighborhood, construction)

[dsb62574]

I travel for work extensively. I accepted a position in Cleveland a while back. It is a nice city with a great downtown. As a fan of public transportation, I attempted to go car-less. While it is possible here, it is certainly not convenient to my schedule. Now, I own a car and drive. Since this change, I must say the roads in Cleveland are horrible. There are pot holes that I am certain could swallow a few city buses. As a relatively new resident, is this normal or due to the heavy wear and tear of winter snow and salt treatment? Will the city fix the roads anytime soon?

[citymama]

They are, indeed, awful!! I'll be following this thread to see what the more experienced clevelanders say about this winter's holes compared to past.
Summer is often referred to as orange cone season, so perhaps they will get repaired then.

[ECBeastor]

There is a whole thread named "W.117th a hot mess" dedicated to this topic. It seems that the problems ae worse this year than past. Maybe due to the unusually cold temps this year. Might also be crooked contractors that unfairly "won" projects, they cut corners in their work and the shoddy construction is finally showing itself.

[Cleveland_Collector]

Hard freezes, snow, heavy road plowing, salt, heavy travel... all of them have a detrimental effect. Also, the more you salt and plow a road over time, the worse it will get. I was just in Chicago over the weekend and the situation is similar. The short of it is that roads need to be maintained and resurfaced and that type of maintenance is not cheap. Especially on the state side, the revenue has dried up (thank you Mr. Kasich). So, counties and cities are left to fend for themselves (with some help from federal grants) even though the bulk of our non-federal tax dollars go to the state. Until that changes, expect the problem to continue. In the meantime, the city will resurface what it has the $ for and will apply for federal grants.

[ehfp]

This winter was a bad one for everybody. There's a good AP overview here: Bumpy ride ahead through pothole purgatory

I found a factsheet about road quality from one of the transportation reseach organizations they cited, and I was surprised to see that it wasn't cold-weather cities leading the pack: http://www.tripnet.org/docs/Urban_Ro...nal_100313.pdf

[Kamms]

Chicago's roads are not as bad as Cleveland's. The poster can expect a common ''every other city has this problem'' answer here as well. Clevelanders like to say this.

[Cleveland_Collector]

Well, I was just there and drove through the south side and up into Old Town. And while I certainly did not drive down every road, some of the ones I did drive down were in similar shape. Also, the sentiment was mirrored by the 5-6 people that I was with this weekend who actually live there. It's not that we "like" to say this. Unlike those of your defeatist ilk, it's that our direct experiences allow us to make proper comparisons. What I'd "like" to say is that all of Cleveland's and Chicago's roads are in pristine condition. The unfortunate reality is that both cities face similar challenges in this regard.

[ehfp]

And, to the OP's second question, I believe they've been filling them as winter's gone on (although I'm sure new ones keep popping up). I know the five or six bad ones I spent January and February dodging on Stokes and MLK were filled by early March.

[Kamms]

Originally Posted by Cleveland_Collector

Hard freezes, snow, heavy road plowing, salt, heavy travel... all of them have a detrimental effect. Also, the more you salt and plow a road over time, the worse it will get. I was just in Chicago over the weekend and the situation is similar. The short of it is that roads need to be maintained and resurfaced and that type of maintenance is not cheap. Especially on the state side, the revenue has dried up (thank you Mr. Kasich). So, counties and cities are left to fend for themselves (with some help from federal grants) even though the bulk of our non-federal tax dollars go to the state. Until that changes, expect the problem to continue. In the meantime, the city will resurface what it has the $ for and will apply for federal grants.

I know some of the neighborhood roads in Chicago have issues but downtown wise, Chicago's streets do not compare to Cleveland's. Last time I was on E 6th between Lakeside and St. Clair was like a driving a moon buggy; Prospect was pretty bad as well.

[bjimmy24]

Honestly, all northern cities have this problem. Sometimes downtown areas get extra attention and get their roads fixed quickly and consistently, but go a few miles away from downtown in any northern/wintry city (Chicago included) and you'll see some rough roads.

Cleveland's, however, are probably a little worse than most, because it's not as rich as other cities.