SERVICES | STREET MAINTENANCE - POTHOLES

In the City of San Jose, there are 2,260 miles of pavement, and somewhere within that vast amount of street miles are potholes. In order to address the potholes, we have two city wide pothole patch crews responding to priority complaints within the next days service after receiving the complaint. There are three people assigned to the patch crews and one in the spray injection patch truck. These two crews are radio dispatched and carry cell phones to:

• provide better and more reliable customer service by communicating directly with the reporting person to get a more detailed description of the location of the complaint;
• inform the reporting person of any problems they might encounter due to a parked vehicle or other conditions that would keep them from completing the job;
• communicate with the dispatchers and other city crews that require their services on an ongoing basis.

We use two different methods of fixing potholes. One, is the two person hot mix patch truck that patches the street with ¼ inch or ½ inch asphalt by first cleaning out the hole. Then they oil the pothole, fill it with hot mix and compact it with a hang-on roller.

We also have a new patch truck that fixes potholes in a new way. This new method is called spray injection. This method of fixing potholes requires one person, does not use a roller and works in a wet hole. The Rosco spray injection truck uses type RS-2 emulsion heated to a temperature of 70 to 140 degrees mixed with ¼ inch aggregate. This truck holds 5 to 6 yards of aggregate and 10 tons of emulsion with a compressor injecting the material through a boom that is located in front of the truck. The damaged area is blown out with the boom arm. The emulsion and aggregate are mixed in the nozzle and pressure blown into the pothole itself. Then a dry coat of aggregate is added so traffic can travel on it immediately. This produces a neater and smoother repair that blends in better with the surrounding asphalt. All of this is a one-person operation done from the inside of the cab. The vehicle is equipped with an arrow board and 3 beacon lights which makes it safer to operate and work on heavy traffic roads.

In the winter or in bad weather, we also use propriety cold mix type material to fill potholes temporarily until they can they can be scheduled for major repairs under better conditions. We also use Quality Permanent Repair (QPR) type material. When the crews complete their complaint assignments, they do other types of repair work. The hot mix patch truck does sewer cuts, utility cuts, sinks, manholes, walkways, bike trails, curb and gutters, feathered slurry seal potholes, and other special paving jobs like work orders, traffic detector loops, and self discovery pothole repairs as they find them. The spray injection truck would do many more jobs because it works faster and would be assigned to do work orders, citizen complaints, traffic detector loops, potholes, and current year chip seal zones.

If you encounter potholes in your travels, get the address or location of the problem and call Central Dispatch at 277-4373 or call the South Yard at 361-0172 during regular work hours or leave a message on voice mail at either location after hours.