A pothole ate my car

Goodbye snow, hello axle-busting potholes.

The snowstorms that battered the region have left some roads more pockmarked than a hormonal teenager and kicked off a pothole season shaping up to be one of area’s worst.

The near constant “freeze-thaw” cycle in recent days has been pure poison for smooth roads. Moisture from melted snow and ice during the day seeps into asphalt to freeze at night, leading to cracks in roads that can become potholes big enough to bend rims and jar suspensions.

“Just when you thought the results of this blizzard were over, you’ve got a really nasty surprise,” said Lon Anderson, spokesman for the AAA Mid-Atlantic auto club. “Mother Nature has carefully planned a bumper crop of potholes for us.”

No jurisdiction is immune. Jaw-dropping pot holes have been spotted throughout the area, with some stretches looking like neglected roadways in Third World countries.

Potholed stretches of the Capital Beltway caused traffic slowdowns Tuesday. Lynn Street in Rosslyn, right before the Key Bridge, is pockmarked with dozens of potholes.

On the side of University Boulevard near Dennis Avenue in Silver Spring, where the potholes are so bad that they are forcing drivers to come to near stops, sits a makeshift graveyard for hubcaps that have popped off the vehicles that didn’t slow down in time.

At Annapolis Road and 48th street just outside the District in Bladensburg, a bucket-size pothole in the intersection is forcing drivers to slow down or swerve to avoid it. A few unlucky drivers winced as their cars were rocked by the pit.

“The potholes plus the ice and everything else, it’s really crazy,” said Nathan Price, a D.C. cab driver and chairman of the Professional Taxicab Drivers Association.

Transportation officials around the area said road crews are focused on snow removal. Fixing potholes, except those that present a grave danger to drivers, is a low priority.

“We’re still in very active snow cleanup mode,” said David Buck, spokesman for the Maryland State Highway Administration. “There’s no real end in sight.”

Buck added that any fixes to potholes made now, with the region still in the grips of weather, would be temporary at best.

Though response time to fix potholes may be temporarily delayed, transportation officials brushed aside any suggestion that the budget-busting snow removal costs may hurt their pothole-fixing budgets.

“We’re going to have to find the money to do whatever has to be done,” said Esther Bowring, spokeswoman for Montgomery County.

Bob Chase, president of the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance, said the repair bill for an encounter with a nasty pothole is the unseen price motorists pay because the area’s transportation needs have been underfunded for years.

Last spring, the District held a monthlong pothole fixing campaign called Potholepalooza that filled more than 6,000 potholes. District Department of Transportation crews fixed more than 400 potholes a day during the campaign.

A spokesman for the department said a similar campaign will likely be held again this year.

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