It’s taken more than two months of overtime work on Saturdays to get it done, but St. Paul Public Works has patched potholes on all of St. Paul’s streets before the season’s first major snowfall.

“We did go up and down every street in the city as part of this route-patching, which I don’t know that we’ve ever done,” said St. Paul Public Works Director Sean Kershaw on Thursday. “It was a big accomplishment.”

The challenge was glaringly apparent to motorists who ventured into the city during spring thaw: a record-setting snow season last winter and heavy snow and ice accumulation during rain and freeze-thaw cycles made corridors of ugly, hard-to-navigate mincemeat out of many of the city’s streets.

An extended pothole-filling season

Kershaw recalled the day in June when members of his department came into his office and broke the news to him that the typical complaint-driven approach to summer pothole patching wouldn’t cut it, leaving the city’s streets still looking and feeling roughshod by winter.

The results would be uneven at best.

“If we only respond to complaints, it tends to bias toward certain neighborhoods where people (are more) likely to complain,” he said.

In July, the mayor and city council shifted $2.55 million from Public Works seal coating efforts in concentrated areas, mostly within Highland Park, and over to street paving across the entire city. Unseasonably warm weather allowed the city’s asphalt plant to remain open to Dec. 15, churning out hot mix a few weeks longer than usual — a boon to both the city and surrounding municipalities that purchase hot asphalt from the St. Paul plant for pothole filling.

“We usually close it in November, weather and climate dependent,” Kershaw said.

More than 3,800 pothole complaints

As of last Friday, according to a statement from Public Works, crews had completed “route patching” all of St. Paul, a process that involved reviewing street conditions on a street-by-street basis.

They also responded to more than 3,800 pothole complaints, though due to the system-wide approach, “it may have felt like we weren’t responding to complaints as fast as we had in previous years,” reads the statement.

In addition, crews skim paved streets in areas that needed more extensive work and TLC, including Summit Avenue, Shepard Road and Davern Street. Major arterial streets and alleys were also patched as needed.

“Davern was really rough because it’s an old road and it was a detour route for a lot of construction trucks,” Kershaw said. “It was one of the entry routes for the neighborhood. We were able to go out on a Saturday and skim-pave it. Probably the worst street of all was Shepard.”

That work unfolded during “an extra busy summer season of road construction and regular street maintenance, including sweeping and mill and overlay operations,” reads the announcement from Public Works.

‘Safer, more sustainable streets’

With the previous spring thaw still fresh in memory, city residents in November went to the polls and approved a percentage-point increase to the city sales tax, intended to raise nearly $1 billion over 20 years. Most of it will be dedicated to some two-dozen major arterial road reconstructions, though a fourth will support parks projects.

“While pothole patching is part of our street maintenance plan, it’s not a long-term strategy,” said St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, celebrating the full-court press on potholes on social media on Wednesday. “Funds from our voter-approved 1% sales tax increase will help us realize safer, more sustainable streets.”

St. Paul Public Works patches potholes year-round and continues to respond to pothole complaints into winter using a pliable “cold mix,” though the approach — which lacks the adhesive asphalt cement — is less reliable or permanent than using hot mix during warmer seasons.

Kershaw saw that weather outlooks seem to favor a warmer-than-average January, which could free up crews to continue laying cold mix.

In that sense, “we’re not done,” said Lisa Hiebert, a spokesperson for Public Works. “We will continue to pothole patch our streets as they need it. But we were able to address the extensive damage to our roads from this past winter.”

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