Daily News from New York, New York • 1327

SJ II II IS 'i i 'M 1 I i I I I I i I i I I I I '1 0 Jt --y a a.f J. I 4) V) Mercury's ups downs are malting a huge dent By JAMES RUTCWCRfl Daily News Staff Writer The season's wild temperature swings have turned major city roads into pockmarked passageways that are mangling cars and trucks. City officials are scrambling for quick Axes for the more than 5,000 new potholes that opened throughout the city in the last week as the mercury seesawed between balmy temperatures and freezing rain. "This has to be our highest priority right now," said city Department of Transportation Commissioner Wilbur Chapman. "We've got crews out doing a full-court press." Potholes have made Brooklyn's Third Ave.

feel like a dirt road. The craters dotting the Triborough Bridge are so large that they have slowed traffic to a crawl. Officials are trying to smooth the roads and the ruffled feathers of drivers by dispatching extra repair crews, sometimes in the dead of night Since Saturday, those crews have spread more than 235 tons of asphalt over the craters, officials said. They placed the blame squarely on this winter's fluctuating temperatures. "There was such a radical shift in temperature that we had a very dramatic experience in terms of the numbers of potholes that we have out there," said Frank Pascual, spokesman for the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority.

"We've been working since last Friday, constantly filling them." Last week's driving rains seeped into road concrete and then froze underground, expanding and loosening the rubble, which broke away in chunks when the temperatures rose again, he said. Workers said that on the Triborough Bridge alone, they have used more than 65 tons of asphalt and 22V4tons of concrete' to fill 530 new craters some as much as 8 inches deep and 2 feet across. That pales in comparison with the holes being filled on city streets. During the first three days of this week alone, workers filled 3,000 potholes in the five boroughs, a DOT official said. Chapman said the potholes are menacing city streets from Seventh Ave.

in Manhattan to the Cross Bronx Expressway. Workers began tackling the problem by filling holes on major highways and avenues first Now they are moving on to smaller side streets. The work can't happen fast enough for livery driver Stuart Williams, 54. "This is as bad as I've ever seen it," said Williams, a driver for 30 years. "They're everywhere: Madison Park Ave.

in the 40s, in the 50s. I'm disgusted." The pothole alert comes after the DOT declared war on the craters this past fall, filling a whopping 29,000. Asphalt isn't the only thing being shelled out to deal with the street damage wrought by this month's changing mercury. "I'm looking at a $500 bill," said VinnyGiar- raffa, a plumber who hit a virtual sinkhole on First Ave. and lost the rear suspension of his a ro truck, as he retrieved the truck at Brownfeld Auto Service on W.

19th St "I couldn't avoid it I knew something was wtnintt tf rt liriint pidht jfmam tft thfl MfcMAejnHT DAILY NEWS By fllX 'EH IIP: Worker fills one of the many potholes on Triborough Bridge yesterday, a result of winter's up-anddown temperatures, grouna, uiarraua saia. txtmZvtfit zmA r.V.7 v3Ai'J mJvPI at.i z.li i i i.