Most cities treat pothole season as something that happens to them in February. Chicago is trying to get ahead of it in October.
On Saturday, October 3, the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) sent more than 30 crews into some of the city's hardest-hit areas for a second straight weekend pothole blitz. The city said the push came as Chicago surpassed 330,000 potholes patched so far in 2026. The Saturday before, crews filled nearly 5,600 potholes in a single day, and the city set a goal of more than 5,000 for the follow-up, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
<figure class="ai-figure"><img src="https://zn2m7h2eiy0bs6ve.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/uploads/ai/chicago-passes-330-000-potholes-patched-as-fall-bl-46cb234e0a0f.jpg" alt="Cold rainwater and thin ice fill a ragged unrepaired pothole at a curb." width="1280" height="720" loading="lazy" decoding="async" /><figcaption>AI-generated illustration.</figcaption></figure>
<h2>Why a fall blitz makes sense</h2>
Winter is normally CDOT's busiest stretch, with crews working seven days a week. The fall blitzes put extra crews on the street to clear outstanding repair needs before freeze-thaw cycles start working on every open crack and loose edge. Mayor Brandon Johnson framed the effort as preparing "our streets for the winter months ahead," adding that every pothole filled "makes our streets safer and more accessible for the people who rely on them every day."
That's the right framing. A pothole left open into December isn't a static defect. Water gets in, freezes, expands and loosens the surrounding pavement. Traffic does the rest. Catching defects in milder fall conditions, when crews can clean, shape and compact properly, gives every repair a better chance of lasting.
<h2>Volume is the headline. Durability is the story.</h2>
330,000 is a big number. It's also a reminder of how much repair work a large city absorbs in a single year, and how much of it can turn into repeat work. Independent tracking of city 311 data by Transparent.city found 33,381 pothole complaints citywide through September 29, up 39.6% from the same window of 2025. More complaints mean more fills. The real question for any agency is how many of those fills will need a second visit.
CDOT is pairing patching with longer-term work. The city says more than 100 miles of streets and alleys have been resurfaced this year, with paving continuing through the fall. Resurfacing is the long-term answer for worn-out streets. Patching keeps the network safe until the paver arrives.
What happens in between is where material choice matters. A fill that loosens after the first hard freeze gets counted twice: once in October and again in March. A repair that bonds well, compacts tight and holds up through temperature swings drops off the list for good.
<h2>What other cities and property owners can borrow</h2>
Chicago's approach offers a playbook that scales down to a small town, a campus or a commercial lot:
<ul>
<li>Do a fall sweep. Inspect and fix before the first freeze, not after the first complaint.</li>
<li>Target the worst areas first. CDOT focused its blitz on areas with the greatest need, which is where both safety risk and repeat failures tend to concentrate.</li>
<li>Make reporting easy. Chicago takes reports through 311, the CHI311 app and 311.chicago.gov. Good data lets crews plan routes instead of chasing calls.</li>
<li>Choose repairs designed to endure. A blitz only pays off if the work survives the season it was meant to prepare for.</li>
</ul>
That last point is where EZ STREET® Ambient® Asphalt fits. It's a ready-to-use, engineered asphalt that bonds to asphalt and concrete, is formulated to work even in wet holes, and is ready for traffic as soon as it's placed and compacted. Because it can be stockpiled for months without losing effectiveness, crews and facility managers can keep material on hand for a fall blitz and for the January call that comes in after a thaw.
<h2>The winter test</h2>
Chicago's crews will find out over the next few months how their fall work holds. Every repair that's still smooth in March is one fewer crew trip, one fewer damaged tire and one less frustrated neighbor. That's the measure that matters for any city: not just how many potholes get filled, but how many stay filled.
For agencies and property managers planning their own pre-winter push, thermally resilient, performance-proven materials such as Ambient® help turn a big repair count into repairs you can count on. Learn more at <a href="https://ezstreetasphalt.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ezstreetasphalt.com</a>.
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Source notes: City of Chicago Office of the Mayor (Oct 3, 2026); Chicago Sun-Times (Oct 3, 2026); Transparent.city (Oct 2, 2026).

Chicago reached 330,000 potholes patched in 2026 after weekend blitzes with over 30 crews filling nearly 5,600 in a day to prepare streets for winter.

Chicago Hits 330,000 Potholes Patched

Chicago Passes 330,000 Potholes Patched as Fall Blitz Targets Winter Readiness

Some years, the pothole queue is annoying. Other years, it rewrites the budget.
Milwaukee is living through the second kind. As of 31 August 2026, the city had taken 23,075 pothole service requests, far above its typical annual average of about 8,600. Spectrum News 1 reported that nearly 7,800 of those requests were still open when Common Council members moved to free up cash and speed up the work. Residents weren’t imagining the bounce in the steering wheel. The data caught up with the commute.
The immediate response was practical. The council moved $300,000 left over from road projects that came in under budget. The money will speed up concrete panel replacements in alleys and local streets and bring outside contractors into work that usually sits with the Department of Public Works. Ald. Peter Burgelis called it a “record year” that deserves a “record response.” Mayor Cavalier Johnson’s proposed 2027 budget would raise road-repair funding from $16.7 million to $19.2 million. That includes $12 million for paving that extends street life, $7 million for reconstruction, and equipment to fill more holes.
That mix is the right instinct. Reactive fills keep people moving. Capital paving and reconstruction shrink next winter’s crater list. South Side residents who describe the same driveway-edge hole for months are the human cost of a backlog that outruns crews. Every delayed repair gives water, freeze-thaw, and traffic another chance to turn a manageable defect into a structural failure.
Here’s the part cities sometimes miss when call volume spikes. Going faster with the same temporary habits just multiplies return visits. Burgelis himself said the goal is to stop depending on the same alley or panel that “keeps getting filled and filled year after year.” That’s a materials and methods problem. If a hole is cleaned poorly, left wet without a mix that can handle it, or opened to traffic before it’s compacted, the next rain reopens the bill.
Private sites feel a quieter version of the same pressure. Warehouse yards, apartment lots, and school drives don’t show up in Milwaukee’s 311 dashboard. They still produce the same claims, the same complaints, and the same scramble when a wet week opens three defects overnight. Property managers can’t wait for a mid-year council resolution. They need a repair they can stock, place, and trust.
EZ STREET® Ambient® Asphalt is built for that kind of response. It’s an engineered, ready-to-use repair material designed for enduring patches that stay thermally stable across temperature swings. Crews can use bags for smaller defects or order by the ton for larger programmes. When the repair is properly prepared and compacted, it goes in without on-site heating, and traffic comes back sooner than a “wait for the plant” cycle usually allows. Learn more at <a href="https://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/what-is-ez-street" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ezstreetasphalt.com</a>.
Ambient® doesn’t replace Milwaukee’s proposed paving increase. Fresh surface is still the best long-term defence. What Ambient® can do is close the gap between “reported today” and “driving on it tonight” with a performance-proven fill. That way the record year becomes a story about catching up, not about chasing the same holes twice.
If your city just posted ugly request totals, treat the number as a planning signal. Fund the crews. Fund the resurfacing. And when you do fill, choose materials engineered to last through the next storm cycle, not just until the next complaint.
<hr />
Source notes: Spectrum News 1 (23 Sep 2026); <a href="https://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/what-is-ez-street" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ezstreetasphalt.com/what-is-ez-street</a> Cover photo: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Walker%27s_Point_Alley_(31342422358).jpg" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">Paul Sableman (cropped)</a>, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">CC BY 2.0</a>.

Milwaukee logged 23,075 pothole requests by late August 2026, nearly triple its average. Here’s what cities can learn from the scramble.

Milwaukee’s Record Pothole Year

Milwaukee’s Record Pothole Year — And Why Speed Alone Isn’t Enough

In Johannesburg, a commute can feel like a negotiation with the road. Drivers weave, brake late, and guess which cavity will do the least damage. Ahead of local government elections on 4 November 2026, that daily obstacle course has become political as well as practical.
Mail &amp; Guardian reporting in mid-September framed potholes as one of the most visible measures of how residents experience the city. Political analyst Dirk Kotzé put it plainly: a pothole isn’t only a pavement failure. It can symbolise problematic management of a local authority. Unlike abstract debates about growth strategy, a crater is something you meet with your tyres — often at night, often without warning, sometimes with a repair bill attached.
One motorist’s account in the same coverage captured the cost in ordinary numbers. Two separate hits in 2026 left nearly R4,000 in tyre and related damage, plus a car sitting at home without a roadworthy tyre. ABS and traction warnings lit up after the first incident. The second burst a rear tyre. That’s not a theoretical “infrastructure challenge.” That’s a household losing mobility.
The Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA) puts scale around the frustration. The city’s road network stretches more than 13,500 kilometres. A recent visual condition assessment found about 21% of the network in poor condition and another 8% in very poor condition — almost three in every ten kilometres in the two worst categories. Over two financial years, the JRA reported repairing 130,473 road-surface deterioration defects in 2024/25 and 126,100 in 2025/26, for a combined 256,573. Importantly, the agency stresses those figures are surface-deterioration defects, not a pure pothole count. Patching, it notes, is often an interim measure to keep traffic moving while deeper problems — ageing pavement, heavy vehicles, intense rainfall, and excavations for services — keep working against the surface.
That last point matters for anyone who manages pavement after utilities dig. A trench that isn’t restored carefully becomes a future failure line. Water finds the weak edge. Traffic pumps the fines. The “new” hole opens next to the old repair. Politics can’t fix that pattern without better reinstatement practice and materials that bond and hold.
Private partnership has also become part of Joburg’s response. Discovery Insure’s Pothole Patrol, launched in 2021 with the JRA and Avis, has repaired more than 365,000 potholes in the city — on the order of 75,000 a year, or about 1,500 a week. The insurer cites sharp drops in reported potholes in areas where the patrol operates, and telematics that concentrate defects on busy arterials and collector routes. Residents have filed tens of thousands of reports through the patrol’s app. Whatever you think of campaign photo ops, a sustained repair programme that residents can trigger is a public-safety asset.
Transport engineers interviewed in the coverage draw a useful line between patching a surface and rehabilitating a structure. If water has weakened the layers below, a thin fill alone may not be enough. Drainage, timely crack sealing, and — when needed — full rehabilitation still sit above any single product. But when a defect is still a surface failure, waiting for a perfect capital project while cars keep taking hits isn’t a neutral choice either.
For contractors, estates, and industrial sites that share Joburg’s climate stresses — heat, storms, heavy axle loads — the practical move is to close hazardous holes quickly with materials designed to perform, then schedule deeper work where diagnostics demand it. <a href="https://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/what-is-ez-street" target="_blank" rel="noopener">EZ STREET® Ambient®</a> Asphalt is a ready-to-use, performance-proven repair option for potholes and related pavement repairs. Bags cover smaller jobs; tonnage supports larger programmes. Properly prepared and compacted, it can be placed without on-site mixing or heating, bonds to asphalt and concrete, works in wet conditions, and is instantly traffic-ready. Thermally resilient, stockpileable supply helps crews respond when weather windows are short.
Ambient® won’t settle an election. It won’t erase a multi-billion-rand infrastructure backlog overnight. What it can support is the part voters actually feel between campaign stops: fewer open hazards on the routes they drive tomorrow morning.
Public-safety framing is the right tone here. Potholes injure wallets first and, in worst cases, people. The constructive path is earlier reporting, honest triage between patch and rebuild, utility reinstatements that don’t sow the next failure, and engineered fills that aim to endure under real traffic. Johannesburg’s voters will decide the politics in November. The roads will keep grading every administration the same way — one axle at a time.
<hr />
Source notes: Mail &amp; Guardian (10–11 Sep 2026; JRA figures = surface-deterioration defects, not pure pothole counts); <a href="https://www.ezstreetasphalt.com/what-is-ez-street" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ezstreetasphalt.com/what-is-ez-street</a> Cover photo: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/9852972@N03/52702361169" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">Axel Bührmann</a>, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">CC BY 2.0</a>.

With local polls set for November, Joburg’s road defects have become a daily test of municipal delivery — and a costly one for drivers.

In Johannesburg, Potholes Are More Than Holes — They’re an Election Issue

The national ironman triathlon championship race is in Oklahoma this month. But just three months after harsh winter storms, literal potholes must be fixed.
When cities host triathlons, marathons, criterions, and other mass outdoor athletic events, it’s a smart draw for those municipalities to welcome visitors. The athletes and their families and friends often spend a weekend – as well as their tourist dollars at hotels, restaurants, and local attractions. It’s a time to spruce things up for the thousands of guests, of course.
But for any such large events that are staged on public streets and roads, the quality of the pavement is about more than just making the place look nice. Potholes in the streets it can affect the competition – slowing down a champion, or possibly causing serious accidents for talented athletes on expensive bicycles. One city that is addressing that in this moment is Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is hosting the <a href="https://www.ironman.com/im-tulsa">Ironman North American Championship</a> race on May 23, 2021.
The race is sold out at 2,500 athletes who will swim 2.4 miles in Keystone Lake, bike 112 miles through two counties (Osage Creek and Tulsa), and run a full marathon (26.2 miles) in downtown Tulsa. Originally scheduled for 2020, the race was postponed due to the pandemic.
<a href="https://www.fox23.com/news/video-street-crews-work-repair-roads-potholes-bicyclist-ironman-event-nears/ef9870e1-6bb9-45d1-b89e-3f553f2fb50c/">As reported on Fox-23 News</a> in Tulsa, another type of race began several weeks prior to the triathlon. City road crews had to patch or pave over a significant number of potholes on the race route. This Oklahoma city was affected by the deep freeze a few months earlier, in February, that famously knocked out power in the neighbor state of Texas for nearly a week. A series of severely cold winter storms swept through the region, dropping temperatures below zero (Fahrenheit), which was made worse as the frigid air was accompanied by snow and ice.
Particularly in regions where temperature dips like that are uncommon, such conditions can lead to pothole formation rather quickly. Tulsa, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston were all affected by those conditions and are now engaged in road repair this spring and likely into summer.
As much of America emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, public events such as triathlons are back on the calendar. Athletes who spent a year off from racing are coming back – but are the roads ready? And what about the places where they train, all over the country?
In June alone, there are five other triathlons scheduled in Texas (in Austin, Lakeway, Fort Worth, McKinney, and Pflugerville). Four more are planned for July (Navasota, The Colony, Waco, and Denton), and another four in August (Rockwall, Denton, Austin and McKinney).
That’s a lot of roads, a lot of potholes, and a lot of potential flat tires and accidents if the potholes cannot be fixed in time.

Are Tulsa's Roads Ironman Ready?

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1949" src="/uploads/rogers-park-bills-savage-bike-parts-54272ed9.jpg" alt="" width="1200" height="675" />Injurious falls occur more often outside the home than in. Artists in Chicago are filling potholes with bicycle parts – perhaps reducing pothole dangers.
In this particularly cold and miserable winter of 2021, after the snow is sufficiently scraped or melted away from the streets of Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood, there are some filled-in potholes from late 2020 that should get more attention than road repairs typically do. That's because a collection of potholes – and one patchy section of sidewalk leading into a city park – has been filled with cement and artfully recycled bicycle parts.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1950" src="/uploads/rp-bill-save-bike-part-pholes-2-9d2194c2.jpg" alt="" width="480" height="640" />
The work by <a href="https://www.therecyclery.org/">The Recyclery Collective</a>, a non-profit that repairs discarded bicycles for extended use, was funded by a grant from AARP (formerly called the American Association of Retired Persons) to support "quick improvements by way of smart public projects." As illustrated in the photos, bits of derailleurs, brake rotors, speed cassettes, wheel axels, and chains are set in concrete that is used to fill spots of pavement failure.
This particular AARP grant of $7500 was made to improve accessibility, a concern for seniors as well as anyone with mobility issues living in urban areas. Heaved slabs of sidewalks, ungraded curb steps, potholes, and other pavement anomalies in fact are the cause of serious injury and death to individuals with mobility challenges – people who are otherwise encouraged to live active lifestyles as a means of forestalling the effects of aging.
<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1483851/">A study</a> published a few years ago ("Outdoor Falls Among Middle-Aged and Older Adults: A Neglected Public Health Problem," Wenjun Li PhD, et al., American Journal of Public Health, July 2006) examined risk factors for outdoor falls, supplementing the larger body of research on indoor slip-and-fall accidents. Their findings:
"Falls occurred outdoors more often than indoors among most age groups. Study participants who reported more leisure-time physical activity had a higher risk for outdoor falls. Most outdoor falls (73%) were precipitated by environmental factors, such as uneven surfaces and tripping or slipping on objects, and usually occurred on sidewalks, curbs, and streets. Walking (47.3%) was the most common fall-related activity."
The study conclusions go on to advise modifying environmental factors – which should include elimination of potholes.
More than one in four older adults falls every year, according to the National Safety Council, citing <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/falls/adultfalls.html">statistics</a> from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). If more of those falls happen outdoors, that means at least one in eight older adults has a fall outside. Of the total number of falls, outdoors and in, 800,000 patients are hospitalized due to such incidents. The most typical injuries are to the head (traumatic brain injuries) and hipbones (hip fractures).
This is not the first and only set of artistic potholes in Chicago. Artist <a href="https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2018/07/mosaic-vermin-by-jim-bachor/">Jim Bachor's</a> works in the Windy City, New York City, and elsewhere are detailed mosaics set in concrete pothole filler. He incorporates everything from political messaging to ironic takes on packaged food products, desserts, and at least one depiction of a rat have been photographed and featured in media such as Colossal, The Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, CBS Sunday Morning, Vivid, and The Art Guide.
What should be obvious is these artistic pothole-fillers are a way to get us to look at the ground we are walking on, think about the messaging, and avoid injurious falls. One might say that looking down is the new way of looking up.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1953" src="/uploads/rogers-park-sidewalk-bill-savage-e1613668629835-fe1f866e.jpg" alt="" width="1116" height="675" />Photo credits: Bill Savage/Chicago

Arty potholes, improved safety?

Tactile Mobility is building a platform for cars and trucks to monitor road quality. Motorists, fleets, and DOTs to get real-time data on bumps in the road.
Where it comes to the future of surface transportation – the ways and means to travel and transport on roads, streets and highways – it’s clear that engineers and technologists are working overtime. So many innovations are afoot: roads with embedded solar panels to power street lights and traffic signals; embedded cables to power electric vehicles by way of magnetic induction; “smart traffic signs” that wirelessly provide hazard warnings to cars and drivers instead of depending on visibility in poor weather; and “smart intersections” that alter the length of green lights to adapt to traffic levels and oncoming emergency vehicles.
But before these gee-whiz vehicle innovations come to fruition, we still have pavement pitted with potholes. Lots and lots of potholes. And with 2.7 million miles of asphalt pavement in the US alone, it’s unlikely that any of them will benefit from Jetsons-like technology in the near- or even mid-term future.
But one intervening technology that might reduce potholes is Tactile Mobile, which melds road-bump movement – “tactility,” as the company describes it – with visual data (cameras). It’s an electronic sensing and processing system that both sees and feels pavement anomalies.
Vehicles equipped with tactile in-vehicle processors record wheel speed (all four wheels), revolutions per minute (RPM), and torque transfer. That data then is then processed according to a proprietary algorithm, employing artificial intelligence (AI) to generate real-time actionable insights on the vehicle-road dynamics. 
The data from each vehicle is ingested in the cloud along with all other vehicles using the same technology plying the same and all other roads. The benefits of this technology imparts to the vehicle owner, as well as owners of commercial fleets where efficiencies (engine, braking, fuel, tires), can sizably affect operating costs. 
“SurfaceDNA is based on real time detection of pavement surface micro-events in the vehicle using Tactile Mobility,” says Yagil Tzur, head of product for Tactile Mobility. SurfaceDNA is a trademarked name for the portion of the product that is sold to departments of transportation, mapping companies, and insurers, among others; VehicleDNA, also trademarked, is the software that is vehicle-specific. “These streams of micro-events are uploaded to [our] Tactile Cloud which uses crowd sourcing to create several map layers including distresses and alerts. The alerts represent high priority events, which are transmitted and processed immediately in the cloud in real time. High priority events include, for example, high impact new potholes, hydroplaning, low grip conditions, and more.” 
In other words, the data can identify where pavement improvements are needed. Cities and states with road maintenance authority can use the data to make repairs soon after the need to fill potholes and other pavement breaks is first identified. Early repairs in asphalt pavement generally are most cost effective.
Of course the more vehicles that are equipped with the technology the greater the data and more effective the analyses and services they provide. “The technology is based on crowd sourcing and relies on the availability of a large number of vehicles carrying the technology,” says Tzur. 
And to what extent does that exist currently? He says the technology is already in test in existing vehicles in four municipalities in the US, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. “Tactile Mobility is engaged with few large, global original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to start rolling out its embedded software as part of vehicle production,” continues Tzur. “Availability is expected by 2021. And from that point and onwards, it will grow as a product of additional OEMs implementing Tactile Mobility’s embedded solution as well as in existing OEMs, multiplying their number of vehicles year over year.” 
Tzur emphasizes that many municipalities currently conduct road condition surveys manually every 12 to 24 months, which might be flawed and not reflect where cars and trucks drive the most. “Tactile Mobility’s technology bridges the gap between both approaches as its solution is accurate, highly refreshed, and available in real time,” he says.

Vehicle-Mounted Sensors See and Feel Potholes

LVL5's "Pavdar" system – recording smartphone video from dashboards – may be the future of pothole detection. Already, it knows Michigan roads are the worst.
It's very hard to get a national, state or even citywide count of potholes on our streets and highways. Which is problematic in two ways: To repair them, first you have to know where they are. Second, to budget for those repairs, you have to know how many and how bad they are.
Google Satellite hasn't yet managed to provide a count because the technology isn't able to get that much information on the granular (potholes and pavement cracks) level (Pothole.info gets asked about this a lot). But there are some technologies in use that attempt to count potholes: Lidar – which uses laser pulses from a puck-like, roof mounted mechanism (as <a href="https://www.pothole.info/2018/03/driverless-cars-vs-potholes/">previously reported on Pothole.info</a>) – is being used by Uber, Toyota and other companies that are planning for the autonomous vehicle era.
With better detection of pavement problems those cars will operate with greater efficiency – and fewer flat tires. A single Lidar unit costs about $4,000 per set, which limits its use and adds to the cost of autonomous vehicles.
Pavdar can see the potholes – at a lower cost per car
But another technology is being deployed at a much lower price. It is called Pavdar, produced by a company called LVL5 (pronounced "level five"). It operates on smartphone cameras, mounted on car dashboards in such a way that the camera records an oblique-angle view of the roadway in front of the vehicle.
Pavdar is a new application of crowdsourcing, enlisting regular vehicle drivers in the quest to identify road imperfections like potholes and pavement barriers (it looks for other things as well, such as bollards, temporary obstructions, traffic-calming cutouts, etc.). Those drivers mount their own smartphones to face forward, turning their phones into dashcams that can see what's there, record it, and then transmit it to the central database. There a computer vision algorithm translates the footage into maps that rate road quality, pothole by pothole, and other traffic-impacting features.
LVL5 applies machine learning to create its high definition (HD) maps, which differs from Waze and Apple Maps, the familiar 2D routing maps in common use on smartphones and newer vehicles. HD maps are machine-readable and 3D representations of static features (road signs, traffic lights, curbs, lane lines) in the driving environment. The degree of accuracy is between five and 50 centimeters, sufficient to detect meaningful pavement imperfections.
&nbsp;
Can this help DOTs find and fix potholes more efficiently?
According to Andrew Kouri at LVL5, the technology is being evaluated by departments of transportation for road maintenance applications. While no municipality has yet to sign on to using it, "It can be a neutral voice," suggests Kouri. "Cities can now know where those imperfections are. It's impartial, not dependent on individuals who happen to be the type to phone in complaints."
Already 11,000 drivers – who are paid by the mile to use the phone app on their dashboards – are participating in the Pavdar system and providing this data (drivers are paid between one and five cents per mile; many of the motorists are ride-share drivers). The company <a href="https://medium.com/lvl5/introducing-crowdsourced-pavement-quality-maps-8ddafd15a903">published a map</a> in late 2018 that illustrated just how broadly it is in use. Just as important, this map ranked road quality by county, from best to worst. Across five million miles of US roads recorded by Pavdar, it found the best pavement is in Florida and the worst is in Michigan.
The company points out that Lidar-based systems lag in providing data to cities, where Pavdar is constantly updating because their collection methods are affordable and continuous. "LVL5 aims to help cities more efficiently maintain their roads by giving them up-to-date data that enables them to quickly identify road problems (e.g., crack in a road) before they become larger and more expensive issues (e.g., a pothole)," Kouri adds.
The firm also looked for correlations between high gas taxes and spending on construction in the effects of those things on road quality. Interestingly, there was no discernable correlation between higher spending and fewer potholes. It's unclear if "spending on construction" encompassed only new building and repaving, or also preventive maintenance (crack sealing and timely repairs to small potholes with permanent-fix asphalt). And to be fair, Michigan undergoes far more freeze-thaw conditions than Florida, the leading cause of potholes (but not the only cause; moisture of all kinds, traffic and high temperatures also contribute to asphalt deterioration).
"State and federal governments spend <a href="https://www.bidnet.com/resources/business-insights/us-government-spending-highway-infrastructure-en.jsp">over $400 billion</a> on maintaining and building new roads each year," says Kouri, raising important questions on infrastructure proposals, planning and execution.

Pothole Detection Via Smartphone Crowdsourcing

Monte Scott is just the latest to fill those craters with his own initiative. Meanwhile, the state’s governor and legislature mull a huge gas tax increase.
When both his mother and grandmother got flat tires on their cars from potholes on their street in late March, 12-year-old Monte Scott took matters into his own hands. He got a shovel, a barrel (without wheels) and some dirt, then filled in a few dozen potholes on the street outside his home in Muskegon Heights in western Michigan.
The story went viral –­ in social media (<a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=monte%20potholes%20michigan&amp;src=typd">Twitter</a> and Facebook) as well as on traditional media (<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/04/01/michigan-boy-filling-potholes-video-goes-viral/3337610002/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=usatoday-newstopstories">USA Today</a>, New York Daily News, The London Daily Mail, Reason, The Hill, Essence magazine, Ebony magazine and television news stations in 25 states). One Tweet from the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, includes a video clip of her congratulating him and encouraging him to one day run for office.
It’s a great story of individual initiative (even if the pothole repair method, using dirt instead of asphalt, might need some alteration as time goes on). But it’s not isolated. As reported previously on Pothole.info, fed-up citizens in many parts of the country often repair potholes with their own grit and self-purchased materials. It’s just the way some people express their outrage and frustration at the expense of car repairs that result from damages caused by broken pavement.
Michigan <a href="https://www.pothole.info/2015/03/will-michigan-voters-decide-to-pay-more-for-infrastructure/">tried and failed in 2015</a> to pass a voter referendum to raise gas taxes to help pay for infrastructure repair, including crack sealing and repair of small potholes before they get bigger. Gov. Whitmer, elected in 2018, has turned to the state legislature to pass a 45-cents-per-gallon fuel tax increase to generate $2.5 billion for infrastructure repair.
“If we don’t raise the $2.5 billion we need to actually fix our roads the right way, with the right materials, the cost will continue to go up year after year,” Whitmer said in a statement that was reported by The Detroit News. “Patching potholes and ignoring the problem isn’t working. Instead, it’s hurting our families and businesses and holding our economy back.” She also cited numbers reported by The Road Information Program (TRIP), which says the state’s poor-quality roads, among the worst in the nation, add an average of $646 in vehicle operating costs to all cars in the state.
The tax would add, on average, $23 per month in gas costs per driver ($276 per year, which compares favorably to the TRIP figures). Whitmer’s political opponents in the state legislature criticized the plan for costing too much. Left unresolved is if the money would be spent on high-traffic roads or residential streets, such as the one Monte Scott was trying to repair.

Michigan Boy Fills Potholes on His Own

The media – social and traditional – has been on fire this week about potholes. More to the point, the extensive coverage and conversation is about who is fixing potholes. The fixer, by way of funding, is Domino's Pizza.
The chain is refreshingly transparent about their marketing angle in doing this. Even the press release concludes with a paragraph about buying a large, three-topping pizza ($7.99) so "customers can celebrate smooth roads." But perhaps of greater importance to motorists is the 15,000-store chain is neatly encapsulating in this campaign several important points about how potholes affect us all:
Bumpy roads affect commerce. When potholes slow deliveries of pizza – and no one wants cold pizza – it's bad enough. But entire business districts and regional economies can be affected by poor quality pavement. Pothole.info covered this a few years ago, pointing out <a href="https://www.pothole.info/2012/01/potholes-hurt-business-but-san-francisco-votes-to-fight-back/">the critical role of infrastructure in local economies</a>.
Bumpy roads are everywhere. The Domino's program (<a href="http://www.pavingforpizza.com">www.pavingforpizza.com</a>) will dole out $5,000 grants to 20 eligible cities all across the country. Thus far the winners are Bartonville, Texas; Milford, Delaware; Athens, Georgia; and Burbank, California. The company is still accepting applications from other cities who wish to receive the grant.
Municipalities need help. Revenues to city, state and federal coffers aren't keeping up with the natural wear and tear of asphalt. It's been a long time – more than a decade – since a voter referendum has passed authorizing an increase in gas taxes and other road user fees. The California legislature bravely <a href="https://www.pothole.info/2017/08/california-bucks-convention-with-gas-tax-increases-new-fees/">increased gas taxes and fees on electric vehicles in 2017</a> – but it may be a challenging factor to incumbent legislators seeking re-election in 2018.
Potholes can be repaired with a sense of humor. The Domino's-fixed potholes are spray-chalk painted with the familiar red-and-blue pizza chain logo, accompanied with the tagline, "OH YES WE DID."
Still, it makes sense that this company created something of this nature. We contacted Domino's' PR department and received a fast response (we think in about 30 minutes, about the time it takes to get a pizza delivered) about why this and why now. "We care about our customers and our pizzas and we know that potholes are a common concern for every driver (including our delivery drivers)," said a company spokesperson. "We didn't need any data to know that this is a common tension around the U.S. and one that, in our unique way, we are hoping to help with."
Most municipalities will take funding wherever they can get it. The city managers of one of the recipients, Milford, Delaware, wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post explaining why he applied for and took the Domino's cash.
"I've worked in local government for 30 years, and attitudes toward taxes have been evolving," wrote Eric Norenburg, who previously worked in a similar position for Oberlin, Ohio. "Our residents have legitimate expectations that we will be careful with their dollars and limit increases in their taxes. And, if taxing formulas and methodologies are perceived as fair to everybody and we demonstrate good stewardship of our resources, then hopefully fewer people will complain about paying taxes. My job, as a professional local government manager, is to identify the best alternatives to providing crucial city services in an equitable manner and then bring those recommendations to our policymakers. Sometimes that means creative financing. And sometimes that means letting Domino's pick up the tab."
So who else might join in the fight to level the pavement? Grub Hub? UPS? FedEx? The United States Postal Service? There will be lots of potholes left after Domino's is done.

Domino's Pizza Now Delivering Pothole Fixes

Newer technologies are reinventing how we fix crumbling infrastructure – in particular, potholes. Cars, bikes, garbage trucks, and drones are part of it.
In an era when smartphones, “smart cities,” the Internet of Things (IoT), and “the cloud” litter our conversations, it may seem as if the discussion is moving far away from the basics of unbroken asphalt and smooth pavement. But in fact these are things that might mean fewer street potholes, more-efficient transportation – and lower infrastructure maintenance costs.
This is because newer technologies can support municipal use of the digital revolution to detect, report, and initiate repairs of pavement. Some of these technologies – the cloud and smart phones, for example – work together. But actually there are several distinct developments that don’t necessarily follow from each other, yet the collectively address the problem of deteriorating pavement in different and effective ways.
A cluster of gee-whiz futuristic road maintenance technologies were on display at the Mobile World Congress gathering in Barcelona last year. Companies that included AT&amp;T, Inrix, Ericsson, Intel, Parkeon, See.Sense and Cisco shared ways in which remote sensors, wireless technology, Big Data, the cloud – with sensor mounts on drones, garbage trucks and bicycles – can help detect and sometimes respond in real time to weather patterns, traffic – and potholes.
For example, See.Sense is a Northern Ireland firm that makes a $99 sensor that is attached to bicycles and uses the cyclist’s smartphone to communicate the presence of potholes (as well as factors relating to air quality) to city monitors. It basically allows community-minded (and pothole-fearing) cyclists to put their pavement proximity to work.
The consensus of attendees at the show, according to Computerworld magazine, was that various forms of IoT are in the earliest phases of development, but that these technologies are showing us the realm of the possible.
Here are some other pavement-related technological innovations:
Boston’s Street Bump – This city leveraged in 2012 the considerable brain trust of its educational institutions with the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics to develop its Street Bump program. It’s a phone app-based system that employs the technology of vertical accelerometers – which record sudden up-down movement – combined with GPS data. Motorists engage it as they begin a driving trip. Through the statistical accumulation of many drivers using the app – crowdsourcing – bumps in the road that turn up most frequently get the city’s most urgent attention.
Google’s vertical accelerometer/GPS patent – The company most recognized for its search engine is also leading in the driverless car arena, which is why in 2015 it patented software that is similar to Boston’s Street Bump. Google’s program will likely be incorporated into driverless cars to detect potholes, which subsequently enables other cars with compatible technology to avoid. Concurrently, the Google cars will supply that information to the municipality to prompt repairs. DitigalTrends.com reported on the software, adding, “empirical data might just help convince skeptics to address the U.S.’s chronic infrastructure shortfall.&amp;rdquo
City of York, England garbage trucks – Why depend on drivers and bicyclists to cover all a city’s streets when the garbage trucks are doing it already on a weekly basis? Both the northern UK city of York and Thurrock Council (near London) are using pothole identification technology mounted to refuse collection trucks to find the potholes in the earliest stages of development. As is well understood, cracks and small potholes can be repaired at a much lower cost when caught early, versus having to repave altogether a few years later.
Leeds University’s drones – With a $6.4 million grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the University’s research engineers are working on “perceive and patch” drones that will actually find and repair potholes. According to PopularMechanics.com, which reported on the study at its launch in 2015, “a bigger issue is overcoming the payload limitations of drones,” says the site. “For a drone to fix a pothole, it must be able to transport heavy construction materials such as cement or asphalt. While there are efforts to create drones that can carry more weight without being too cumbersome and clumsy themselves, perhaps the more realistic solution is to use multiple drones flying in formation to carry heavy payloads.&amp;rdquo
Which paints quite a picture. But with so much interest in making the streets and highways smoother, safer, and less costly, these lurches forward to new technologies certainly seem like positive developments. Even if there are a few bumps along the way.

Sensors, GPS and Crowdsourcing vs. Potholes

More than just a few municipalities are throwing in the towel on bad pavement. Replacing their potholes are gravel and dirt roads – which have their own issues.
Two noteworthy American cities about 1400 miles apart are chewing up rutted, potholed pavement and replacing them with dirt and gravel. The reason this is happening boils down to money – or a lack thereof. But others argue it's just a matter of poor long-term planning and bad short-term decisions.
In a nice neighborhood of Omaha, Nebraska, where homes on large lots sell for $400,000 and more, the city road crews chewed up the decades-old asphalt streets and replaced them with dirt and gravel in the summer of 2016. This isn't happening all over the town, just in neighborhoods where an original agreement determined that the streets needed no curbs and gutters and that homeowners were responsible for repaving when needed. Residents complained when the roads started falling apart, of course, but this latest move to de-paving culminates a long-standing refusal on their part to pay for asphalt maintenance.
Other areas of Omaha didn't have this agreement and those streets are kept paved and well maintained. The 10,000 residents in the affected areas would need to come up with $300 million to restore their streets to asphalt.
This same retro solution is also being applied in Montpelier, Vermont. The nation's smallest capital city, population 7,855 in the 2010 census, has decided that dwindling funds for infrastructure repairs are best used to grind up decrepit streets and turn them to dirt and gravel. Some residents and city leaders claim it is quaint and a nod to Yankee ingenuity and frugality. The owner of a car repair shop <a href="https://www.wired.com/2016/07/cash-strapped-towns-un-paving-roads-cant-afford-fix/" target="_blank">told Wired magazine</a> that when well maintained, dirt-and-gravel roads are kinder to cars than heavily-potholed pavement.
Which indirectly gets to an important point: even dirt and gravel roads need repairs and maintenance. Yes, gravel roads too can get damaging dips and bumps if not given proper attention or under unexpectedly adverse weather conditions such as flooding. Add how traffic on gravel streets can kick up dust, affecting cars, homes and air quality and it's easy to see how this is less than a perfect solution.
As people across the country are discovering. There are an estimated 1.6 million miles of unpaved roads in at least 27 states in the U.S. While that may seem dismal, they have to be considered in relationship to a score assigned to paved roads and bridges by the American Society of Civil Engineers to American roadways. That's a letter D grade, poor road conditions largely attributed to how spending by federal, state and local departments of transportation hasn't kept up with inflation. Because the costs of asphalt, cement and concrete have gone up even more than other goods, we effectively are spending nine percent less today than in 2003 – even while natural population increases mean more traffic plies and further damages those cracking, pitted and pockmarked highways.
One organization takes a strategic look at this and says it's due to poor planning. Strong Towns, a non-profit advocacy group, says that in Omaha the original agreement was made by homeowners who just didn't seem to care about what would happen in the future. "Let the guy who's in charge 20 years from now worry about that," <a href="http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/8/23/more-potholed-roads-turn-to-gravel?rq=Omaha">the organization's website</a> sarcastically imagines how the conversation went. "Something gets lost in the math between 'The city should keep up our roads' and 'we don't want to personally pay for them,'" muses a Strong Towns column.
There are technological dynamics that might make a difference in how this plays out. In Montpelier they use <a href="https://www.usfabricsinc.com/geotextileapplications/pavedunpavedroadparking" target="_blank">geotextile</a>, a durable and permeable fabric, to reinforce the dirt and gravel that minimizes erosion and drainage problems. Pothole repairs in asphalt too have fillers that offer varying degrees of longevity. While most asphalt applied in wet winter and spring conditions is temporary (and disappointing), some advanced asphalt formulations are permanent.
Strong Towns takes a <a href="http://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/" target="_blank">dim view of suburban sprawl</a>, examining how municipal and state leaders emphasize building without financial planning for long-term maintenance. These gravel roads might be a harbinger of things to come – or a wake up call to allocate more money to preventive maintenance and repairs.

Adios Pavement, Hello Gravel?

Everyone loves Canada and Canadians. But it seems their potholes are very sad and very neglected.
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