While torrential storms bring catastrophic floods, downed trees and mass power outages to the Bay Area, water is also seeping into asphalt causing cracks to morph into one of the region’s peskiest — and costly — problems: potholes.

“It was a really uncomfortable jerk, like ‘Oh did my molars just come loose in my mouth?’ ” said Natalie Diller, recounting a pothole her husband’s Tesla hit on Highway 101 in Redwood City this week. “It wasn’t just a boom, boom — it was breathtaking.”

Throughout the Bay Area, local public works departments and Caltrans, which oversees fixing highway potholes, are reporting an uptick in dangerous asphalt fissures that can blow out tires, destroy a car’s undercarriage and catapult unsuspecting bicyclists to the pavement.

In San Jose, the Department of Transportation typically sees five to seven potholes reported daily. Since heavy rains started last month, the city is tallying about 20 to 25 pothole-repair requests a day, said spokesperson Colin Heyne.

This week, Heyne was driving home from Trader Joe’s when he hit a series of potholes obscured by floodwaters on Highway 87. “I thought I was going to die,” he said. “I was like ‘Oh, the wheels are gonna fall off right now.’ “

Caltrans also shut a lane of Highway 17 traffic for two hours on Tuesday after a pothole near Los Gatos caused damage to multiple vehicles. And in Oakland, the city’s online request platform is flooded with pothole images and captions reading: “Giant potholes more than one” and “Must swerve into oncoming traffic lane to avoid hitting.”

How’s your day started? My car hit a damn pot hole on my way to work and popped my tire. So my day started good great! This means my day can only get better right? pic.twitter.com/S7asA8nVe4

— #49ers (@49ersgiantsfan1) January 11, 2023

Bay Area drivers have long dealt with brain-rattling potholes, and a large chunk of California’s 54-cent gasoline tax along with local tax measures goes toward battling the constant backlog of roadway maintenance and repairs. In San Jose, the stretch of 101 near Interstate 880 is affectionately dubbed Lake 101 due to its perennial flooding and resulting potholes.

But heavy rainfall can make the Bay Area pothole problem far worse, said John Harvey, who heads the Pavement Research Center at UC Davis. The water doesn’t create cracks in the roadway but instead finds the cracks and works its way into the asphalt, causing the mass of petroleum, sand and gravel to soften and deteriorate. When water pools over cracks, it creates even stronger hydraulic pressure, splitting apart the asphalt.

“You can’t have a pothole unless there’s already a crack there,” said Harvey.

While rainstorms cause gaping holes to open on roadways, fixing them during bad weather is more complicated due to the chemistry of asphalt. Caltrans is unable to patch a soaking-wet hole and has to wait for pauses in the rain to do the job, said Pedro Quintana a spokesperson for Caltrans.

The first step in the repair is spraying it with a thin layer of substrate asphalt that acts as an adhesive, said Harvey.

If it is raining, the material is sprayed into “a soup bowl, and the patch just floats on top of the soup,” he said.

The City of San Jose, which he praised as a state leader in pavement repairs, uses a special “performance patch mix” and “spray injection patch truck” that allow repairs in wet weather.

All this means that, at least in the coming weeks, the Bay Area’s pothole woes are only going to increase, said Robert Prinz, a director for Bike East Bay, a nonprofit that advocates for cyclists

“The bad news is, the rain makes already bad streets even worse,” said Prinz, who is hosting an online workshop Friday on how to effectively report potholes and other roadway hazards to local government.

Pothole problems have even inspired ad-hoc groups of “vigilantes” in Oakland and Vallejo, who have resorted to patching holes themselves as they criticize slow city bureaucracy.

But Prinz said he has gotten around 1,000 holes patched over the past eight years by dutifully noting them to local governments, using techniques he outlined in a tutorial. While response times can vary from weeks to months, he said local agencies typically come through.

His advice for residents eyeing a new hole: Use online reporting tools available in most Bay Area cities, including San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco.

What if your car or bicycle is damaged by a pothole? For drivers, the best bet is if you carry optional collision insurance. You can also file a damage claim with the city if the incident occurred on a local roadway or with Caltrans if the pothole was on a highway. But beware, the chances of getting reimbursed are slim; in 2019 Caltrans upheld fewer than 1 in 10 claims.

The gaping holes can wreak life-altering damage beyond a blown-out tire or bent undercarriage. The victims of these severe pothole-related crashes are often cyclists.

“For a bike, even deviation of an inch or two on the road can destabilize it,” said Shaana Rahman, a San Francisco-based attorney specializing in bicycle-injury cases.

In these cases, the victim must prove that the agency had notice of the pothole or should have reasonably known that a danger existed. Some of the strongest proof in these cases can be previous notice by residents of existing potholes. One cyclist won a $3.25 million judgment against the City of Oakland after a downhill collision with a pothole caused severe injuries to her face, teeth and jaw.

“Public entities fight very hard in these cases, said Rahman. “They almost always deny that they had any notice or that they did anything wrong or that the pothole was even a danger,”

---

• Report an error
• Policies and Standards
• Contact Us