EDITORIAL – Living in pothole country is getting to be very expensive

An editorial by Mel Rothenburger.

LET’S FACE IT, we live in pothole country.

With this endless freeze-thaw-freeze cycle we’re in, we have a bumper crop of potholes.

Everywhere we go, they’re ahead of us. Deep ones, round ones, long skinny ones. We’re talking serious divots. Driving around town these days requires extreme awareness of what lies below one’s wheels.

Multiple residents are reporting destroyed wheels from hitting hard-to-see potholes hidden by snow, water or darkness, or that they come upon unsuspectingly and don’t have time to avoid.

Fortune Drive is cited as being particularly bad right now. One driver who says he was going the speed limit did serious damage hitting a pothole that was narrow and deep.

Another destroyed a tire on Westsyde Road. Judging by the picture he took, the pothole looks cavernous.

Experts say the damage isn’t always obvious right away and if we hit a big teeth-rattling pothole we should have our vehicle checked out. Potholes can be more serious than a damaged tire or wheel, too — they can cause drivers to lose control and crash.

We might think we have a monopoly on pot holes but they are the bane of motorists around the world. In some places, they’re so big and stubborn that people have taken to giving them names.

Ideas on what to do about them vary. One man took a video of himself having a bath in one. Since it sometimes seems to take a while to get potholes fixed, another proposal is to move repair shops and hospitals closer to the potholes.

A more practical approach is to file a report to the City, which recommends taking a photo of the pothole and sending it along to help crews locate and fix it. That can be done via the myKamloops app or the Report an Issue page on the City of Kamloops website.

But keep in mind, with this climate-change weather, the worst is yet to come.

I’m Mel Rothenburger, the Armchair Mayor.

Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops, alternate TNRD director and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.