Imagine for a moment life as a section of roadway. Passing cars are constantly pressing down on you, followed by periods of relaxation when there’s no car. All day, every day, year after year. All this repeated pressing and releasing creates tiny imperfections in the pavement that turn into cracks. When you add water into the mix, those cracks get bigger, faster.
“Whenever it rains and the rainwater accumulates on the road, tires from the road actually squeeze the water into the pavement,” Caltrans spokesman Bob Haus says. “So that repeated squeezing into the asphalt and into the concrete causes the cracking.”
Water gets through those cracks and weakens the soil under the road. That leads to even more cracking and eventually a pothole.
The more traffic, the more potholes. And the Bay Area has no shortage of traffic.
“There’s just a lot of traffic on Bay Area roads,” Haus says. “We all know that. We feel the congestion every day. So there’s just a lot of wear and tear on our highways.”
I’m sure a lot of you are wondering why crews aren’t out there fixing all these potholes. One thing to note: Road workers have to wait for dry conditions to make permanent fixes. So the rain not only makes more potholes, it makes it harder to fix them.
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