Pothole relief on the horizon

Potholes aplenty

City crews already have filled 10,256 potholes so far this year, a total that includes holes that have reopened repeatedly this winter. For all of last year, crews filled 12,896 potholes.

To report the location of a pothole that needs filling, call the city’s Pothole Hotline, 832-3456, or fill out a form online accessible on the Public Works page at lawrenceks.org.

The rough road stretching for nearly a mile along Iowa Street is being patched and repaved with a fresh driving surface, an emergency $200,000 job expected to be finished by the middle of next week.

Desperate times call for swift action.

“We were literally patching almost around the clock, every day on Iowa,” said Mark Thiel, assistant director of public works for the city of Lawrence. “It was time to do more than pothole patching.”

Repair work started Thursday morning, as crews from Lawrence-based Sunflower Paving Inc. set out to breathe new life into pavement that had been left for dead by harsh winter conditions.

Job one: Patch and repave damaged areas of Iowa, from Yale Road south to the overpass of Irving Hill Road — excluding the eastern edge of the road, which is set for repaving once a new water line is installed later this spring.

The repairs will not be expected to endure for the long haul.

“We’re trying to patch it and get it to where it’s drivable until we can hopefully get a rebuild (of the road) in 2012,” Thiel said.

Other road repair-and-repave projects slated for coming days, as part of a special $400,000 reshuffling of the city’s road-repair priorities for this year:

• Through March 20: Louisiana Street, from 19th to 23rd streets. The entire stretch will be closed to through traffic next week, as Lawrence and Kansas University students are on spring break.

• March 22 to 26: 31st Street, from Ousdahl Road east to the city’s maintenance limits.

• March 29 to April 2: Sixth Street, from Monterey Way to Folks Road.

• After April 5: Kasold Drive, from West Fifth Terrace to Peterson Road.

The city is financing the repairs using some of the $850,000 money that had been set aside for rebuilding Kasold, from Sixth Street to Peterson. That project now will be expected to take two years: The section will have its main problems repaired this year, while more extensive work — including work on sidewalks, an extensive repaving, upgraded medians and marking of a shared bike lane — will wait until 2011, Thiel said.