Only in New York, kids… only in New York.
That is closing line on New York Post columnist Cindy Adams’ usual run down of the weird and famous of the Big Apple. But we might say the same of the NYC Department of Transportation’s clever method for communicating the relentless enterprise of pothole repair. The department sponsors a website called The Daily Pothole, which does what you might expect: it provides a tally of the number of potholes filled every day.
And filled at night, we should add. The NYC DOT website stresses that much of their planned work takes place during the dark. It is the city that never sleeps, after all. But it also is less disruptive to the throngs of traffic in all five boroughs that is thick in all but the wee hours of the night.
But does this meet Ms. Adam’s standards for weird and famous? Well, some might consider a website that reports on what are basically pavement voids to be weird (but looked at another way, repairing potholes ultimately leads to a smoother ride, fewer accidents and less money spent on car repairs). Famous is a given: everyone knows what a pothole is. We know them the minute we see them.
And those potholes, repaired and not yet repaired, are all over the place in New York. The run down at last check (on March 23, 2012) was as follows:
1,085 potholes repaired on March 22, 2012
1,329 potholes repaired on March 21, 2012
1,886 potholes repaired on March 20, 2012
1,240 potholes repaired on March 19, 2012
1,052 potholes repaired on March 15, 2012
1,488 potholes repaired on March 13, 2012
1,508 potholes repaired on March 12, 2012
1,878 potholes repaired on March 8, 2012
The site also tallies totals since it was put up: 187,272. But just as important, The Daily Pothole links to the city’s online pothole reporting form as well as a street rating map.
You can call it weird or famous, but most important you can check in on progress and create some progress of your own by reporting a pothole that needs to be repaired. Clearly, the city of New York DOT is on the case.
