Saturday, July 07, 2007

Potholes don't fill themselves

Today, the LAist brings up the point of whether or not the Mayor can recover from the news of the last month. They mention that he's going to announce this week the filling 350,000 potholes in the next fiscal year.

We try our best to stay away from personal commentary, so here are some facts...

Fact: 350,000 potholes would be about 1,000 a day for the next year. (Possible, yes; but...)
Fact: Those crews filling potholes are also the ones who are responsible for sweeping & cleaning streets as well as working on other Bureau services.

Fact: Currently, there are over 200,000 requests for pothole repair are received annually (but not all are technically "potholes").
Fact: Most road erosion or abrasions are not potholes. See this chart for an explanation of a pothole (and what's not a pothole).

Fact: the Mayor has only authorized the Bureau of Street Services (who is responsible for street conditions) $125 million for this fiscal year. (sounds like a lot, but...)
Fact: Street Services needs $300 million per year just to maintain the streets in their current conditions (based on oral reports from the Bureau at various meetings).

Question: Where is the funding and/or personnel coming from to fund the increased number of potholes? This seems like 1) either an announcement of something already happening and being repackaged or 2) a way to avoid actually fixing the problem and literally just patching together a semblance of the nation's largest municipal street system.

4 comments:

you know said...

sounds like you and i should get in the Pothole Filling business, as an outside contractor to the city, funded by deep pockets corporations (liquor, tobacco) who are dying for ways to improve their image.

i imagine the labor must be inexpensive as it's not really something you go to college for. and its an industry where mankind And nature are constantly making more business opps for you.

feonixrift said...

I've seen some pretty flimsy work called "pothole filling"... If he means they're going to dump crumbly bags of instant road into the holes and let passing traffic do the compression of it, without so much as tamping it down to make sure it stays in the hole rather than blowing away, yes I bet they can do that many holes in a year. It might even help a bit, although that stuff stinks for at least a week.

the zero effect said...

what about potholes in alleys? i live near an alley where cars zoom through as a shortcut.

Anonymous said...

sounds like exaggeration on the part of the Mayor and Cynthia Ruiz.
There is no way crews are filling 1000 potholes a day.