The City’s pothole patrol is working overtime.
Responding to severe winter storms that wreaked havoc on local roadways, Mayor Kevin Faulconer and City Council member Monica Montgomery on March 14 announced a major expansion of the City’s pothole repair program to fill thousands of potholes that developed during heavy rains over the past few months.
The number of pothole repair teams has been nearly tripled from nine to 26 two-person crews per-day, working extended hours and on weekends.
The enhanced pothole patrol couldn’t have come at a better time, according to Pacific Beach and Mission Beach residents.
“The Get it Done App has worked well, but with the recent amount of rainfall, it is going to be hard for any city crew to keep up,” said Greg Knight of Pacific Beach. “Parts of our streets have become serious hazards and have already damaged quite a few cars. They should have been working on these months ago, and not waited until it became such a crisis.”
“The pot holes and cracks are everywhere in Mission Beach,” said Gary Wonacott, immediate past MB Town Council president. “These problems with the roads are compounded by the city digging up roads to replace old sewer pipes and under grounding.”
Pointing out the Get It Done App “has worked pretty effectively for Mission Beach residents, but not for everyone,” Wonacott added, “My guess is the City has been getting a tremendous amount of negative feedback from the population and the mayor is responding.”
“Road repair is a big concern in our neighborhood and we hope the increase in this department will include Mission Beach,” said Matt Gardner, current MBTC president. “Many have used the Get It Done App, and the actions from the city through this app have been mainly favorable. The city’s reaction time and problem resolutions work with satisfactory results or better around 75 percent of the time.”
Added Gardner: “We continue to educate our MBTC members on how and when to use this app effectively. We hope that using this app for road repairs will have quick resolution to the increase in potholes due to the recent rains.” 
PB resident James Krokee noted a problem with the Get It Done App. “It requires an address,” he said.  “When I am driving and run over a pothole – I don’t stop and take down addresses.”
Added Krokee: “Ingraham Street in PB is a disgrace. It and Midway are worse than Tijuana. Large cracks run down the street with many pot holes forming. These streets need to be repaved after pipeline projects.”
The City typically fills about 30,000 potholes each fiscal year. This fiscal year, crews have fixed 25,000 and counting in less than nine months. 
“We’re going to take advantage of this dry spell to fill as many potholes as we can,” Faulconer said. “We’re making this a top priority.”
In October 2018, Faulconer announced City crews had fixed 1,000 miles of streets – nearly two years ahead of his five-year goal.
The City cited a number of factors for the increased efficiency of pothole patching: tripling funding for road repairs, holding contractors accountable for quality work, rotating street crews into each council district and expanding the City’s infrastructure program to have the capacity to fix more than 300 miles of street annually.
A decade ago, the City only repaired 25 miles of streets in an entire year. Now the City fixes nearly the same number of miles in an average month. 
Residents can monitor the City’s street repair progress for themselves at streets.sandiego.gov. Street repair requests can be made through sandiego.gov/get-it-done application, or by smartphone or computer.
“Our roads took a beating from repeated storms so we’re going to take advantage of this dry spell to fill as many potholes as we can,” Faulconer said. “We’ve heard San Diegans loud and clear and we’re making this a top priority. That means more crews in every neighborhood filling more potholes than ever before.”
“The condition of our streets has been a long-standing concern of our residents. I am happy to join Mayor Faulconer as our City crews work to fill the annual 2,500 potholes in our district making roads safer and more drivable for residents,” Montgomery said. “I want to thank our Streets Division crews for executing this important quality-of-life work.”