Nasty Winter Means More Potholes in the Quad Cities
After battling the snow and ice on I-88 and I-80 coming back from Chicago I noticed something as I turned from Welcome Way onto 53rd in Davenport. They had done a great job plowing, but also seemed to have totally ripped up the street in the process. If there's one thing Quad Cities public works chiefs agree on: This winter has been hard on the streets.
Nicole Gleason, Davenport Public Works Director and Assistant City Administrator told the Quad City Times the city has logged 355 pothole related requests from citizens. Filling those potholes has been difficult too. 16 out of 30 days in January the weather was so poor the City couldn't get out and patch them.
Mike Bartels, Interim Public Works Director for Rock Island echoed the same sentiment to the paper. "In the five years I’ve been here, this is the worst I’ve seen it in the city of Rock Island. Normally you get a week of dry weather between storms, and we just haven’t seen that this year." That's a big part of the problem. Our cycle of extreme cold, snow and freezing has made getting that dry pavement needed to patch potholes difficult.
They've been trying in my little corner of the Quad Cities to keep up. I've seen Davenport Public Works out trying to patch the roads up. I thought, that's cool, trying to get ahead of the game. Apparently, it's more like just trying to put a band-aid on things until spring arrives. And that is when complaints about potholes go way up according Brian Schmidt, director of public works in Bettendorf.
Hope your vehicle's got good shocks cause those pot holes aren't going anywhere, and mother nature keeps dishin' out more winter weather for the Quad Cities.