Workers widening Lovers Lane – and many of those who contribute to 12,000 trips per day on the road – got that sinking feeling Tuesday: A sinkhole opened in the road.

Early Tuesday morning, a depression appeared near the entrance to the Lovers Lane Soccer Complex, about 11/2 feet deep and 6 feet wide, according to Keirsten Jaggers, public information officer for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, District 3 office.

Although the road is being widened at that point, the hole wasn’t in the area being graveled for new paving. It was in an existing traffic lane, which has been open for years.

That stretch of the road closed while state workers and contractors already on-site dug out the soft ground, Jaggers said. They struck solid rock about 20 feet down, and filled it in with more rock, she said.

By 3:30 p.m., the section was repaved and open to traffic.

City Engineer Jeff Lashlee said the Bowling Green Public Works Department got several calls about the sinkhole from people stuck in traffic, but it was out of the city’s hands – the widening work is a state project, and the city’s not involved.

This isn’t the first time a sinkhole has suddenly opened beneath a major local road. In January 2002, barely two years after the extension linking Dishman Lane with Cave Mill Road was completed, a large dip appeared in the road about a quarter-mile from Lost River Cave. City officials initially were unsure what caused it; they found out Feb. 25. State Trooper Cave collapsed, swallowing three cars but injuring no one. Digging out the loose dirt and replacing it with solid fill and concrete took until November 2002 and cost more than $800,000, of which the state agreed to cover about half.

In the aftermath, the city began contracting for microgravity tests along the course of any new road project, looking for tiny fluctuations in gravity that indicate an unseen void, Assistant City Engineer Melissa Cansler has said.

Although the state has done microgravity tests on some road projects, none were done on Lovers Lane, Jaggers said. What geotechnical work was done may have taken place a year or two before construction, meaning issues that arise later may not turn up at the time, she said.

The state did not ask the Center for Cave and Karst Studies at Western Kentucky University to inspect the site before filling it in, Jaggers said, but is “monitoring the area for any other problems relating to sinkholes.”