With any business start-up, there is the lingering question of “if you build it, will they come?” And even if they do, will it mean anything?

But that is not the worry with developers, investors or users of SeeClickFix, the phone app enabling citizen engagement in pothole abatement. Citizens are coming, local governments are responding – and the potholes are getting fixed.

The surprise is that all these volunteer pothole reporters are also helping municipalities save money. Public employees who used to be tasked with finding the potholes and receiving phone-in pothole complaints can now shift to other functions. That might include more crews who actually repair the streets – to the cheers of motorists, cyclists and elected officials.

Massachusetts Gov. Duval Patrick in Mass is proposing a major funding increase to fix streets and bridges – including and especially the potholes – in the aftermath of the winter of 2010-2011.

Patrick is asking the state legislature to increase the pothole budget from $155 million to $210 million. Meanwhile, a citizens group joined with several state mayors to ask that the number be pushed up, closer to $300 million – a near doubling of the original road projects bill for the year. Braintree, Massachusetts Mayor Joe Sullivan told the Boston University Daily Free Press, “We think that we can double the $155 million to improve infrastructure and increase jobs. The need is greater, so the $300 million is not far-fetched.” A final determination on funding will be made at an April 1 vote in the Massachusetts legislature.

Pothole.info continues to be the go-to source of information on potholes and how they affect our lives.

According to television news reporter Mark Albert on KSAX-TV in Minneapolis, “The website Pothole.info says, ‘drivers will spend $330 each year repairing your car from these hazards.’”

That was the bad news. But there may be better news on the prairie horizon, says Albert. He notes that the potholes in the Twin Cities in 2011 are “historic.” Addressing that problem, Albert spoke with a road crew working with pothole repair material from a Mendota Heights, Minn. company, TCC Materials. They are testing a pothole repair method using taconite aggregates, derived from iron ore mined in the considerable iron range areas of Minnesota.

That pothole your car hit sometime in the past week: can you blame it on salt used this past winter?

If you live in Los Angeles, where potholes-per-mile are among the highest in the nation, the answer clearly is no. Los Angeles does not use salt. Never has, and probably never will. When the roads ice up in Los Angeles County, it is so rare an event that the city has no road salting supplies or methods. Almost always, it melts in a day or two with nary a granule of salt applied. The ubiquitous potholes there form because of water, wear, high temperatures and time.

The producers of the Colin McEnroe, specifically Patrick Skahill and a group he assembles featuring Captain John Holt and Chion Wolf, peppered the program that aired on March 7, 2011, “Potholes Are Unbearable,” with a couple of songs that pay a rhythm and bluesy tribute to that ubiquitous scourge of streets everywhere.

This first is soloist Chion Wolf with her own ode to potholes: