"We have all our crews mobilized to address them," said Tyler Sugihara, acting chief of the city's Division of Road Maintenance. "There has been a severe increase because of the wet weather."

It isn't as bad as earlier this year, when the city hot line received about 80 calls a day, but workers are scrambling to keep up, often making temporary fixes to places they will have to come back to later, Sugihara said.

"And I have driven on some of our roads and I noticed where we did the emergency overlays, the first-aid work, that even those are coming apart," he said. "It is frustrating."

None of this is news to Aimee Tabilin, whose daily drive from Palolo to her Bishop Street office at Benedicktus & Associates became a bone-jarring excursion once the skies cleared.

"It's bad," she said. "It's horrible. I don't want to drive because the roadway is going to mess up my car. It will mess up my alignment over time."

Her co-worker, Naka Gaceta, a certified home appraiser who is on the road every day, has it worse. He commutes from Ka'a'awa and, like many folks who make the same drive, has memorized the locations of the largest potholes.

"If you follow the locals, you notice they snake along that highway," he said. "It's dangerous. We all go around them. That's when accidents occur."

On Monday, crews at the city's eight maintenance yards around O'ahu were told to hit the streets and look for potholes.

Sugihara said additional funding for "road rehab" is helping, but crews have to work hard to keep up, especially since 30 percent of the positions are vacant right now.

The state Department of Transportation did the same thing this week, said spokesman Scott Ishikawa.

"We've rescheduled all of our road maintenance crews to do pothole duties for the next two weeks," he said. "Folks who were doing grass cutting and sign repair have been asked to do pothole repair duty to take care of the rash of complaints."

The state has spent $350,000 so far this year fixing potholes, he said. The better solution is wholesale repaving, and there are several projects under way or about to start, he said.

"Patching potholes is a temporary fix," Ishikawa said.

The impact from January's punishing rain surprised transportation officials.

"The state and the city have resurfaced a lot of roads since the winter rains and I think it has cut down on potholes," Ishikawa said. "I think everyone was taken aback by the winter rains. Everyone is more prepared this year."

Resurfacing of a 5-mile stretch of the Moanalua Freeway should be finished next month and give motorists about eight years of pothole-free driving, he said.

A similar project is under way on the Kalihi side of Likelike Highway. In January or February, work will begin on Nimitz Highway.

State crews made repairs yesterday to the H-1 Freeway near Pearl City, and in two areas of Kamehameha Highway — one near Wahiawa and the other near Sunset Beach. Today, they are on Nimitz Highway and at Castle Junction.

"Some of the potholes are pretty deep," Ishikawa said.