Along Bethel Avenue between the Alumni Center and Northside Middle School, the winter weather helped create a pothole, Supervisor of Bus Operations Gary Moses said.
At the time, he said, two Ball State University shuttle buses were driving at night and the drivers couldn't see the hole.
Suddenly, one tire on each bus popped and the rims were damaged, Moses said, which amounted to $1,000 worth of damage.
Moses said the hole was patched after reporting the incident to the Muncie Street Department, but his drivers have to watch that hole and roads constantly during the winter season.
"It's very easy for [pothole patches] to open up with the freezing and the thawing," he said.
Street Commissioner Doug Brown said the university was responsible for maintaining McKinley Avenue from Bethel to North Riverside Avenue and the rest of the streets were maintained by the Muncie Street Department.
Brown said crews should have Muncie's potholes filled by the end of the week, but with the moisture in the holes, the filling keeps being broken out.
Crews use something called a "cold mix" in the winter to fill the hole in city streets, he said. During the summer and winter, two different mixes are used to fill the potholes, he said.
Brown said in wet conditions, the "cold mix" stays in the hole for about 24 hours. The "cold mix" will stay in the hole in dry conditions, he said, but it is rare to have perfectly dry conditions in the winter time.
Brown also said the potholes wouldn't be able to stay filled until the summer months, when the conditions were drier.
"The heavy rains is what broke [the filling] out," he said.
He said crews and supervisors took calls from the public on the potholes, so they worked on the city's main and secondary roads.
Moses said he even made at least one call a week to the street department about the potholes shuttle bus drivers saw off university roads.
Gene Burton, Ball State's director of public safety, said it was not possible to say how many people called the police for assistance when a tire pops because of potholes.
Moses said the buses with the popped tires were back in operation and were taking passengers.
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