March 10, 2015

Mayor Emanuel Announces City Crews Equipped with Additional Resources for Spring Pothole Season

Mayor's Press Office    312.744.3334

As temperatures warm up, City crews are staffed with reinforcements to tackle the challenges of pothole season this year thanks to additional resources Mayor Rahm Emanuel directed to the City budget for street repairs.

“Whether it’s plowing our roads, patching potholes, or repaving streets, we’re making sure Chicago residents can keep moving in all seasons,” said Mayor Emanuel. “City workers have been doing a great job, and as we get closer to the peak of pothole season we will all be doing everything we can to ensure our streets are patched, paved and passable."

Mayor Emanuel added $10 million to his 2015 budget so additional street repair crews would be available full time to patch potholes through the winter months. The Mayor's additional funding doubled the Department’s budget for pothole and pavement maintenance, allowing CDOT to enter pothole season at peak staffing strength. Today the City has 32 pothole crews deployed in neighborhoods throughout Chicago, with the ability to ramp up pothole crews further as needed. Crews are even assigned to fill potholes on the weekends, giving the City coverage seven days a week.

The increased resources for the City’s street patching operations will help reduce CDOT’s turnaround time compared to last year, and on average it currently takes less than two-and-a-half days to respond to pothole repair requests. As of today, there are 465 pending street pothole requests, though the City will remain vigilant heading into peak pothole season.

As a result of last year’s harsh winter, the city filled a record 920,172 potholes in streets and alleys in 2014. At the same time, Mayor Emanuel believes you can't just patch your way to passable streets. At Mayor Emanuel’s direction city departments and private utilities have greatly increased paving efforts and since 2011 more than 1,000 miles of streets have been repaved – nearly a quarter of Chicago’s streets. In 2014, CDOT, the Department of Water Management (DWM), private contractors and utilities combined to repave a record 343 miles of roadway.

Chicagoans can track pothole patching efforts, and see a week’s worth of CDOT’s work, on the City’s Pothole Tracker: www.cityofchicago.org/potholetracker.

CDOT encourages Chicagoans to use one of the following three methods to report potholes:

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