Roads under stress

With several more weeks left to go in the freeze-thaw season before heavy spring rains arrive, Tennessee and Georgia commuters should brace for more road delays, according to state road officials.

"If we could build an umbrella over our roads, we would not have to make as many pothole repairs," said Julie Oaks, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Transportation.

Already this winter, the Chattanooga region has had two major rock slides in the Ocoee Gorge, two mud slides on Signal Mountain's W Road, at least two rock falls on Cummings and Scenic highways on Lookout Mountain, a sinkhole on U.S. Highway 127 on the bluff of Signal Mountain and a Chattooga County, Ga., drainage pipe and road collapse.

During Friday morning's rush hour, a massive pothole erupted on Interstate 24 in the Missionary Ridge cut.

More than 38 inches of rain and six inches of snow have fallen locally since Sept. 1, according to weather records. That soaking, coupled with the normal minor earth tremors the region is known for, several years of drought before the recent rains, and a long string of freezing days and nights, has been recipe for road trouble, officials said.

"That part of Northwest Georgia generally is known for geological instability," said Mohamad Arafa, a spokesman for the Georgia Department of Transportation. "It's all hard on the roads."

Ms. Oaks said water seeps into roads or bluffs and, if it freezes there, the ice pries the rock or cracks in the road surface apart.

"And then it rains more and lubricates the (loosened) surfaces for slides," she said. "Our geologist said this past year has been worse for rockslides than it has been in probably 10 years."

Sinkholes and potholes are formed in similar ways, but sinkholes usually occur out of sight beneath the roadway until the road collapses, she said.

Last year, Ms. Oaks said, the state spent $27,000 for pothole fixes in Hamilton County. Work in the first six months of this fiscal year already has tallied $30,774, she said.

On Friday alone, the emergency patching work of 60 potholes in a 1.4-mile stretch of I-24 required 13 tons of cold asphalt fill mix, according to highway officials.

Ms. Oaks said TDOT received federal assistance to pay for the estimated $2 million road cleanup of the first Ocoee rock slide. The state also will seek federal help for the second Ocoee, estimated at nearly $760,000.

But the smaller problems -- such as potholes that suddenly appear -- can't be handled by emergency money, or even stimulus highway funding. They will come directly out of TDOT's budget, Ms. Oaks said.

After the two recent Ocoee rockslides on U.S. 64, Ms. Oaks said highway workers took advantage of cleanup time to do pre-emptive work, taking down rocks still in place that look suspect.

And on Monteagle Mountain, where a 2000 slide on I-24 cost nearly $1 million to clear, highway workers installed drain pipes deep in the rock to carry water from behind the bluffs.

While highway departments can't stop rain, snow or tremors, highway officials say they have aggressive preventive road work programs.

Hamilton County Director of Highways Harold Austin and other highway officials say road workers are on constant alert to inspect all roads whenever they drive or perform regular maintenance.

"We've got supervisors out on the roads every day. If they see a rock or tree that's about to fall, they go ahead and do something about it," Mr. Austin said last month when the first of several small mud slides clogged the lanes of the W Road on Signal Mountain.

While the Volunteer State gets a pretty good grade for the maintenance of its roads, the Peach State just barely missed failing.

The American Society of Civil Engineers' 2009 infrastructure report card gives Tennessee roads a B- and Georgia roads a D+. The nation's roads, as a whole, garnered a D-.

"Poor road conditions lead to excessive wear and tear on motor vehicles and can also lead to increased numbers of crashes and delays," the report states.

Those "poor road conditions" may not get fixed any time soon, since states across the country report a $549.5 billion shortfall between their budgets and their investment needs, the report says.