The city is pretty good at filling potholes, but a sunken utility chamber cover that’s as bad as a giant pothole doesn’t seem to be a priority.

We recently got a complaint about a sunken utility lid on Kingston Rd. that’s in the “worst possible place,” the seam between the westbound curb lane and the right-turn lane onto St. Clair Ave.

A reader told us he regularly travels west on Kingston Rd. before merging into the right-turn lane that leads to St. Clair, a maneuver he dreads when there’s a line of drivers doing the same thing.

“So you’re trying to get over and there’s a car behind you doing the same thing,” he said. “You have to speed up a little to get in (the turn lane), and just as you start to get over, there’s the hole.”

The first time he hit was last winter, he said, and the impact was so jarring that “I thought I broke something in the suspension. It was like a big bang.”

Now that he knows what awaits him, he said he does his best to get into the turn lane as soon as possible, to avoid it. But at 8:30 in the morning, when rush-hour traffic on Kingston Rd. is heavy, it can be hard to steer around, he said.

“Lot’s of people don’t know about it and don’t see it until they hit it,” he added.

We went there and found a utility cover that’s well below the surface of the surrounding road, with several asphalt patches around its edges, evidence that previous attempts to smooth out the bump were a short-term fix, at best.

The edges are colored with faded orange paint, an indication that someone with responsibility for it knows about the problem, but so far hasn’t done anything about it.

We went by last week and spotted a traffic barrel on top of it, as if that’s an improvement. Our regular readers know we have a low opinion of pylons as a fix for anything.

STATUS: We sent a note to transportation services, asking if the utility responsible can be persuaded to fix it. We got a reply that said the utility has been notified, that it’s up to them and that city staffers will keep an eye on it to make sure the traffic barrel stays in place. Considering how many drivers end up hitting it, and the potential for vehicle damage, we think the city should crack the whip and make it clear that the chamber lid needs to be fixed at once, and not just with another patch around the edges.

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