Still trying to patch potholes without much success

Today is the first of March, and spring is not far off. That means it is officially pothole season in Wisconsin. You don’t have to drive far to run over the large potholes as things thaw out. It is always a problem this time of year, but it seems worse this year. Northbound Losey Boulevard is particularly bad, as I discovered while driving over the weekend. That is a county highway, so La Crosse County is in charge of fixing that stretch of road. They were doing that on Monday, which I discovered as I noticed the piles of hot mix freshly laid atop the crevices. They don’t even bother to tamp it down. The piles were several inches high, at least for a short time, until cars drove over them and kicked the hot patching material out from the hole and onto the undercarriage of our cars. The patch doesn’t stay in place long, especially when it is raining as it was while they were doing the work. The county should take a clue from the city of La Crosse, which recently discovered a patching technique that actually works. Instead of hot mix, crews put down a sort of rubberized tar that actually stays in place more than a day or two. They patched the intersection of 6^th and King streets last year, and the work remains intact. Whatever they used should be used by the county for road repairs, rather than throwing done piles of tar that are gone in a day or two, revealing the potholes that threaten to damage our suspension.