Please Report Potholes (for all the good it seems to do)

Saturday I had to give my brother a ride. His car had 2 flat tires and bent rims from an encounter with a pothole. It was a West Norriton pothole. Not sure what their excuse is for not fixing theirs. Norristown is always crying broke, though we seem to find money when developers come around begging.

Anyway, as I drove to my brother's place on the other side of the West End, I had more than a few encounters with potholes myself. Remember all those spots I talked about on Hamilton Street last year? For the second time, all the patches on those potholes are gone. Whatever N-town uses to patch potholes seems to dissolve over each winter. Sometimes you see small hunks of macadam littering the street, but more often the patches just seem to vanish, leaving even bigger holes behind them every time.

I'll say it once more. If we'd take what we usually spend patching and repatching the same holes over 5 or 10 years time, and just spend it on cutting out those lengths of damaged road, rebuilding them and sealing them properly, we'd save money in the long run. But we never were good at long-term thinking in Norristown.

Since no one is listening to sense, can we at least get the holes fixed soon? The municipality has been bragging about their new way to report potholes on the mobile app for their website. You can find it by looking for "Norristown" in Google Play or Apple store.

If you don't have a smart phone, you can still report potholes by email at streets@norristown.org , or by phone at 610-270-0437. I sent in my report on the potholes that I encountered this weekend by email. We'll see how fast they get fixed.

The Times Herald has a map of potholes for Montgomery County at this link. You can also report potholes not on the map by emailing acampbell@timesherald.com. I don't know if the TH actively shares this info with N-town Public Works or just expects Public Works to check their map. Still, worth a try.

If we all report all the potholes we encounter, maybe it will help. We can at least say we did our part before complaining. If that doesn't work, we have something to complain about.