The New Hotness

It took a while, but the owners of Janet Drive did a commendable job of resurfacing the giant potholes that were consuming the parking lot entrance:

That patch covers all the holes, has a smooth surface, and neatly joins the adjacent pavement without huge bumps. It’s entirely possible to do good repairs, if you just hire the right contractor.

Which doesn’t happen if you’re NYSDOT, unfortunately, as they regards a few random hand-tamped blobs on a section of Rt 44 (and Bike Rt 44, for whatever that’s worth) as entirely adequate:

The sinkhole on Rt 376 that we must dodge maybe four times every week continues to grow:

Somebody who should know better suggested the NYSDOT crew just ran out of asphalt after patching all around the sinkhole that I’d reported back in July, but …

The NYSDOT Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordinator (yeah, she exists) assured me the engineers were studying the signal timing and would contact me directly:

That hasn’t happened after four months, so I’d say NYSDOT uses the word “study” to mean “stonewall”.

There are more examples, but, to make a long gripe short, I’ve (once again) proven to my own satisfaction that there’s no point in reporting bicycle-related maintenance problems to NYSDOT: it only annoys them and they retaliate by making things worse.

We just keep riding…