To the Editor:

Should I save my breath to cool my soup? Not this time.

There are ongoing road hazards that I have tried to get New York State Department of Transportation to rectify. I called the 1-800-pothole number twice to complain about the abundance of craters in Route 443, Helderberg Trail, which I will call “The Obstacle Course.”

I did not ask for a new road (although we could certainly use it). All I was asking for was for a crew to come up and patch the numerous deep holes in the highway.

The area is from the top of the Letter S on Route 443 to East Berne and on through until you get to the new section in Berne. The last time I spoke with those folks at 1-800-pothole, they found it amusing and refused to give me any kind of time frame to check it out.

I then said to myself, maybe it’s time to use political influence to prod them into some action. I called the local number for [State Senator] George Amedore’s office. I explained the dangerous situation in regard to road conditions with numerous potholes to a worker in his office. The worker said he’d make a call to his contact in the DOT and get back to me.

A few days later he did get back to me, only to say the DOT does not have any plans to work on this section of road until 2018. I said, not even to fill holes? The answer was no.

How many potholes does it take and how deep do they have to be before some action is taken to fix them? How many people have to drive in a weird fashion so as not to damage their vehicles?

I care too much for my friends and relatives to see this condition worsen while nothing is done about it. The state’s DOT could take a lesson from our local town of Berne, and Albany County crews that do an outstanding job year-round.

Dennis White

East Berne

Editor’s note: Presented with Dennis White’s complaints, Bryan Viggiani, spokesman for the state’s Department of Transportation, responded that a Harsh Winter Paving Program on Route 443 from the Schoharie County line to Route 156 in the town of Berne was completed in 2015. “We paved 4.5 miles of Route 443 from the Schoharie County line to east of Route 156 under that project,” he wrote in an email. “Separately, in 2014, we paved a 1.5-mile segment of Route 443 (which is also known as the Route 443/Route 85 overlap) near the roads named Upper Letter S and Lower Letter S.”

Vigianni concluded, “A project to pave the section of road between these two recently paved sections is currently being designed here at DOT. We anticipate performing that work next year.”