Bump, THUD, clank, rattle

Here's the story from Monday's Naperville Sun:

By Kathy Cichon
kcichon@scn1.com
The drive on Ogden Avenue may just become a little smoother.
Work to repair the potholes dotting state roads in DuPage County is slated to begin today, weather permitting. The Illinois Department of Transportation recently approved a $1.8 million contract for pothole patching in DuPage, part of a total $16.3 million recently approved for DuPage, Kane and Cook counties.
"It was a really harsh winter, with lots of snow and ice," said Mike Claffey, spokesman for IDOT. "The freeze/thaw cycle was extreme this year."
Among the major area roads to be repaired is a 3-mile stretch of Ogden Avenue from North Aurora Road to Route 59. Work there is scheduled to begin toward the end of the month.
"We could be working in that area for a week or two," Claffey said. "We'll close one lane at a time, so there will be one lane open to traffic."
Patching starts this week on 22nd Street from Butterfield Road to Route 38. Other area roads scheduled for patching include portions of Route 53, including the area from 75th Street to St. Andrews Road.
Portions of Butterfield Road include areas along a 10-mile stretch from Naperville Road to Route 25 in North Aurora.
"There are some sections in there that are deteriorating," Claffey said.
Work there will begin in mid to late June, he said. At times traffic will be controlled by a flagger.
The work in each location will last for several days with all projects expected to be complete by the end of June.
IDOT is in the process of awarding pothole patching contracts for three other counties, including Will.
But the state is not the only agency concerned with pothole repair. On Tuesday Naperville's City Council approved a nearly $1.3 million contract to resurface three city streets including Aurora Avenue from Washington Street to Ogden Avenue. That dollar figure also includes the cost of adding landscaped medians to Aurora Avenue, a project that was moved up a year in order to be done at the same time as the resurfacing.
"Aurora Avenue we were going to do next year," said Bill Novack, city engineer. "It wasn't in bad shape until that last week in January. The last week in January it just started to come apart ... We tried to get that extra year out of it. We just couldn't."
The other streets to be resurfaced as part of this contract are Shuman Boulevard between Washington and Mill streets and Eagle Street from Aurora Avenue to the West Branch of the DuPage River. This year Shuman would have received a layer of microsurfacing, extending its use by four years. But it became necessary for it to be repaved completely.
"It had such heavy deterioration, it's not even a candidate for microsurfacing," Novack said.
While the number of phone calls the city receives regarding pothole presence has decreased, the city's Public Works department continues to fix areas where they are present, said Christine Schwartzhoff, operations team leader with the city's Public Works Department.
In addition to taking its toll on the roads, the harsh winter also increased the amount of money normally spent on repairing the season's damage.
"Normally we spend $20,000 to $25,000 a year on potholes," Schwartzhoff said. "This particular season we probably doubled that and are close to $50,000."
Also seeing a sharp increase is the amount of salt used by the city during the winter to help clear the roads. This year the city used 22,000 tons of salt, while last year the figure was 13,600 tons. While the salt helps to melt the ice, it also contributes to the freeze/thaw cycle that results in potholes.
"Indirectly it does contribute to that, but the real culprit is the freeze/thaw," Schwartzhoff said.