Public Employee Press

Pothole Blitz

By DIANE S. WILLIAMS

This was the winter of potholes as New York City dug itself out of 14 snowstorms, which buried the boroughs under a total of more than 50 inches of snow and ice. The harsh toll of one of the coldest winters in decades showed on streets and bridges that froze, buckled and blistered and became obstacle courses for tens of thousands of drivers, sending hundreds of cars to repair shops with busted tires and axles, bent rims and cracked bumpers.

Fractured feet, hands, wrists and arms brought pedestrians who stumbled on the rutted streets into hospital emergency rooms, and potholes were blamed for life-threatening accidents where vehicles careened or stopped short to avoid the moon-sized craters. When a car plunged off a Bruckner Expressway overpass Feb. 10 and crashed onto the roadway 50 feet below, police said the driver had swerved to avoid a massive pothole.

New York City declared war on potholes, and members of DC 37 Locals 376, 983 and 1157 were the frontline troops. The hardworking Dept. of Transportation crews went on weekly pothole blitzes to fix the record number of cracks and craters. By mid-March, they had filled almost 180,000 potholes.

Record repairs

"Our members met the challenge of this tough winter and came through for the people of our city," said Local 376 President Gene DeMartino. To make city streets safe for traffic, in the first three months of 2014, DOT dispatched 50 crews who crisscrossed the five boroughs filling more than four times as many potholes as last year. A typical crew includes Highway Repairers in Local 376, Assistant HRs in Local 983 and supervisors in Local 1157.

Experienced DOT workers haul tons of asphalt in a hot box, a trailer that keeps the filler hot enough to pour into potholes. They tamp and seal the filled holes and move quickly on to the next site.

Pedestrians and drivers report potholes to 311 Call Centers and Community Boards, which send the information to DOT. DOT crews of three to six workers worked 12-hour shifts this winter to fix streets on the daily lists.

Local 983 President Joe Puleo believes it would be more efficient for the crews to follow the street grid, a past practice where crews filled potholes and fixed cracks street by street, block by block, in every borough. "Now, DOT crews have no discretion to fill holes they encounter along the way," Puleo said.

The current method, a carryover from the Bloomberg administration, he said, means that in neighborhoods where residents don't call 311, streets can remain in disrepair longer. Local 983 also wants DOT to make seasonal AHRs - who are now hired from April through December - into year-round employees.

"AHRs are ready to work and are trained to properly shovel snow, remove debris and fill potholes," Puleo said. The Sanitation Dept. got an extra $7.3 million for snow removal this winter and used some of it to hire day laborers at $10 an hour, $18 if they worked over 40 hours a week, to shovel bus stops and crosswalks.

"It makes no sense to hire day laborers or private contractors to remove snow," Puleo wrote Mayor Bill de Blasio, "while seasonal AHRs are off the job in winter months, when they are most needed."