Philly – Pothole City

It’s unbelievable how terrible Philly streets are! I mean, gimme a break. Potholes in every neighborhood, on almost every street and every block. It’s bad enough we have some cobblestone streets that have been left untouched for posterity’s sake (nice to look at, awful to drive on) and abandoned trolley tracks, but the potholes are frikkin ridiculous. Literally, when I’m driving passengers throughout the city my car is a rockin’ and a rollin’ and it’s NOT to the music! I’m pretty good about avoiding the worst potholes because I’m very careful, but sometimes when I’m turning at the corner I hit one and it pisses me off. I’m convinced that easily half of the potholes in the city are caused by contractors doing construction. I mean, the city is literally, a city “under construction”. Philly’s website should have a banner across it that says “Philly is Under Construction”. The contractors dig up the streets (Temple area, Fishtown, South Philly, etc.) for new building construction and leave some deep potholes with sharp edges. Oftentimes, you can’t drive around those holes because the street is too narrow or has parked cars. Even rolling over them slowly is painful. I don’t understand why they can’t even put a sheet of metal or a wood board over it, or mark it with a cone or spray paint so drivers can see it before they bust an axle. They ought to be fined for leaving those holes in the street for weeks or months, but the city seems to be busy with other things. With all the money the PPA is making, the city ought to earmark pothole repairs with some of that money. Be safe and watch the road!