The City’s Transportation and Capital Improvements Department knows San Antonians don’t like potholes, and the department is urging people use the City’s 311 service system to report the ones they see across the city.
Pothole patrol crews are aggressively targeting potholes this month with the goal of filling 7,500 across all 10 City Council districts by the end of April. Department staff are simultaneously launching a $15,000 outreach campaign to teach people how to report potholes.
“[More reporting] gives us a better understanding of where the needs are in the city,” said Anthony Chukwudolue, assistant director of Transportation & Capital Improvements (TCI). “While we’re being effective in proactively looking at areas and identifying the potholes, it’s also very very helpful to get those calls from our citizenry to then deploy crews.”
Chukwudolue said that once TCI receives a report about a pothole, its crews are committed to filling it within two business days. Once workers are on the scene, it takes about 30 minutes to actually complete the work. TCI has 16 vehicles with approximately 28 on-site workers who fill potholes at an average cost of $39.27 per hole.
There are four ways for San Antonio residents to report a pothole.
- Call 311. Callers should be prepared to provide an address, intersection where the pothole is located, or best approximate location of the pothole, said Paul Berry, the chief communications officer for TCI. Callers also should be able to describe the pothole’s size.
- Report the pothole online with a form accessible through the 311 website.
- Tweet a request to San Antonio 311 @SanAntonio311.
- Submit a report through the San Antonio 311 mobile phone application, available for free download for through the Android and Apple app stores.
TCI reported that crews filled 75,127 potholes last year but received just 11,268 calls reporting them. Chukwudolue said that the department decided to conduct a survey last month to find out why so few reports were received.
City officials said approximately 4,700 residents responded to the survey, 51 percent of whom indicated they did not know how to report a pothole. Eighty percent of respondents said they simply did not report potholes when they saw them, they said.
He said that crews have filled 6,500 potholes so far this month. City Council Districts 1 and 2 have the most, because the roads in those areas are nearing the end of their useful lifespan.
“The more potholes that are reported, the more potholes that our pothole patrol can repair for the city,” Chukwudolue said. “Spot it, report it, and we’ll fix it.”
