Staten Island Man Leads Charge Against Potholes

thisidisforjoe's flickr

Potholes are a scourge whose depths of evil know no end: already, the DOT has had to fill more than 45,000 potholes, cave ins and the like since the first storm hit in December. There are tons of people writing about their struggles with them on NY1 and CNN, and we had our own brush with these doomholes when we were trapped on i278/BQE for over two hours last week due to "pothole maintenance." But now, there is one Staten Island man leading the charge against these portals of dilapidated pavement.

Jack Graziano has started a one-man campaign to warn people about the dangers of potholes on a particularly damaged stretch of Amboy Road in S.I., and he brings with him a chilling message: "The accident is waiting to happen but when it does it’s going to be massive. It’s such a combination of potholes that the people are going in the wrong lane to avoid them." Graziano is basically a real-life version of Dennis Quaid's scientist from The Day After Tomorrow, and the politicians just won't listen to him. He described driving over the road: "I go over the bumps and my teeth rattle...You’ve gotta see it over here; it’s devastation, it’s demolished, it looks like the whole street is not even there no more."

Graziano is facing a steep battle to get pol's to listen to him; asked today about the pothole problem, Mayor Bloomberg somehow blamed them on the big bad that is Albany...and he shares Graziano's fears for the future: "If we don’t get some help in terms of relieving some of the mandates we have, the cuts from the state are going to be very difficult to deal with...Do we have enough resources? No. And the future is - unless we can get some help from Albany in reducing some of the mandates - the future is going to mean even more sacrifice and fewer abilities to respond quickly. That’s just the real world."

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Ben Yakas in News on February 9, 2011 6:12 PM

Comments [rss]

whitecastlerock

huge craters out here in Queens-but the DOT needs to focus on bike lanes right now...

mistermarkdavis

the DOT is spending more on pot holes than bike lanes. the bike lanes get a lot of federal matching funds.

whitecastlerock

really? they aren't spending it in my borough...

mistermarkdavis

http://www.streetsblog.org/201...

Barbara Starkweather

The second the city got the roads cleared of snow, Staten Islanders and their elected officials were screaming about potholes (which are mainly caused by snow plowing and salting). And local rag the Staten Island Advance was egging them on by running stories on potholes.

http://search.silive.com/potho...

Yup, 5330 results. You can't cross the street on Staten Island right now without navigating piles of ice and snow on practically every corner, but It's potholes on the front page every day. Go figure.

TeddyNYC

I'm more interested why someone would attach a Rockstar sticker, makers of the Grand Theft Auto video games, to that cone (in the above picture) than this story. Hey, we all know owning/driving a vehicle in this city is a major pain in the ass. One time when I was driving in New Jersey heading back to Brooklyn, I could have sworn I heard my car say please let me stay here in Jersey, these pothole-related headaches are driving me crazy. Not that Jersey doesn't have its share of potholes, but once I cross the Goethals Br. back to Staten Island, things go from okay to unbelievable fast.

Rod

all ya gotta do is ask your readers to go out onto their blocks and take a few pix of potholes and send them in.

in the next couple days I'll do it in my nabe.

Rod

I don't understand why most journalists refuse to tell the truth.

all you have to do is go outside and look and you'll see there are almost no potholes anywhere except where the road was previously cut up by verizon and con ed and their like.

meanwhile, some roads have not been repaved in the 17 years we've had republicans in charge.

again, reporters won't mention any of this except for david seifman at the nypost and pete donohue at the daily news. both have proven that all the potholes are the fault of a crook named bloomberg.

stop allowing this jerkoff to claim it's mother nature.

try this:

go drive a car out on the LIE across the queens / nassau border.

pretty weird that the shitty road way ends at the queens line.

but I guess 20 feet over the border , they have different weather!

Communist

Since when does Verizon/Con-Ed work on highways?

There are tons of pot holes. I dodge about 40 on my way to work. Every car driver knows how shitty New York's roads are.

Best city in the world with 3rd world country roads. I was in Florida and could not believe how nice the roads are there.

Eric Gordon

Granted, Florida doesn't have the winters that we have, but still, our roads are pretty comparable to what I've seen in the villages of Costa Rica.

cmdrogogov

We could just cut down on the number of roadways we support and expand public transit systems to compensate. Even bicycle lanes have a fraction of the surface area required of a road or highway.

Just another reason why cars are an idiotic solution to urban transit.

silver

And the "cave ins" (knee deep or deeper) aren't caused by ice and snow. They are caused by leaking water mains washing dirt into the sewer system. Water that you pay for :-)

Snow plows tear open old pothole patches making them bigger each year, because the patches are slightly raised from the original asphalt level.

http://maps.google.com/maps?cl... this ramp will tear your wheel off if you go faster than 20 mph from all the holes and failed patches, been like that for years

http://maps.google.com/maps?cl...

http://maps.google.com/maps?cl...

http://maps.google.com/maps?cl...

I could go all day on the GCP. They are doing some construction on the GCP near Laguardia. Maybe, just maybe they will fix it so the GCP isn't the Moon.

Eric Gordon

There's a spot right before the construction starts heading west, there are about 30 hubcaps all along the shoulder where people have smashed into a huge pothole. And just this morning, heading east on the GCP, a mercedes in front of me (with low profile tires) hit a pothole so hard it shredded his tire and he had to ride the rim to the right shoulder. It is insane out there, and the GCP is one of the worst offenders. Not to mention the streets in Astoria, I can't imagine driving around in anything smaller than my truck. Literally shin deep holes.

mistermarkdavis

the pot holes are pretty bad in staten island. bloomberg did a lot of work to get rid of many pot holes when times were good, but there is a lot less money for that sort of thing now.