Quote:
Originally Posted by 3rd&Brown
I've started submitting tickets on PennDots website for particularly egregious zones.
The first reply I got from them was something like, we're seriously understaffed and if you want a job please apply. But in the most unprofessional and not funny way. It went on to cite staffing levels in a PennDot region that doesn't even include Philadelphia and I was like, what's the point of that.
Anyways. I have noticed things getting better on the highways but I've also been stuck in arbitrary PennDot traffic jams (the most recent being to repair potholes on the 95 bridge just north of the airport) and I sat in traffic for an hour to watch 2 lanes of traffic cut down to 1 for potholes and no sweeper in site. Given traffic was already stopped, there should have been sweepers running the stretch of 95 north of the closure and sure enough there were none. And plenty of trash to go around.
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I go back and forth thinking it's lack of funding and thinking it's just incompetence.
I drive to DE at least three times a week for work. Immediately--like, immediately--over the state line, the interstate goes from disgusting to beautiful. Smooth surface, maintained vegetation, and virtually no litter.
Why?
Well, as to the litter and the vegetation, I see maintenance crews along 95 in Delaware at least once a week. By comparison, I see them once or twice a year in Pennsylvania. I mean, JFC there was a whole dead deer that was left decomposing for months on the shoulder last winter near the airport. This could be a symptom of underfunding. Delaware's state income tax is more than double Pennsylvania's. And clearly some of that extra money is going to maintenance.
As to the road surface, I've concluded that it simply has to be at least partly incompetence. PA seems to resurface the roads as frequently as DE and NJ. But it seems that no matter how often PennDOT scrapes and repaves, within months the road forms terrible transverse cracks and bumps and, eventually, potholes. This doesn't happen in DE, and I don't see them on the roads in NJ either when I get re-routed that way. I don't understand why it's so hard for PA to maintain its roads.
I will say that, of late, the Philadelphia sections of the road have been cleaner, and for several months now the litter has been far worse in Delaware County than it is in Philadelphia. Also, the cleanup of the refinery site at the bottom of the Platt has, by any and every measure, improved the "welcome to Philadelphia" experience you get coming in from the airport.
I know many folks on here are anti-highway and avoid driving as much as possible; I wish that was my life, too. But man... the lack of upkeep on the roads is truly atrocious and really does set us apart in a bad way. Hopefully things keep marginally improving.