Now, I go over this spot every morning, pretty much, and most of the time I just swerve out around it and keep on going. But this morning, I happened to be going over it with a great stinking OC Transpo bus passing me, so I couldn't avoid it, and jarred my way over it.
And it occurred to me that not only is this piece of pavement egregiously bad, but it's a patch job over something that was, ostensibly, worse. I vaguely remember this stretch before the half-assed asphalt-slather happened, and I can't really say this is much of an improvement. Look at the bit where the slapped-on asphalt misses filling in the hole by a good eight inches! Look at the sloshes of black tar and grit that sort of got squooshed up against the curb! Check out the scooped ridges just before the white line! It's like this was deliberately indended to be terrible. What is this, some kind of work-to-rule thing on the part of the road crew? Did they have to leave off suddenly and never come back to finish the job? Is this the Mary Celeste of roadwork?
At least the council give you warning: the spray painted picture shows a bike's breaking points should you ride over this every day (and your seat will fall off to boot). -Paul
ReplyDeleteI've seen this before around bus stops, and when I click on the picture to get a better view, sure enough - there's a bus stop sign right there. The constant pounding by busses pushes the asphalt around. Forcing it up against the curb is common.
ReplyDeleteWow, now I'm going to be checking every time I go over one of these bone-scramblers to see if it's near a bus stop! (Somehow, though I'd never thought of it before, it's not that surprising: those buses must really do a number on the pavement.)
ReplyDelete& Paul - thanks, that made me laugh out loud.