Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Scouting out potholes

STREET CAVE-INS SKYROCKET
By SALLY GOLDENBERG, NY Post

It's a rocky road for city drivers.

Complaints about street cave-ins went up 71.5 percent over the last year, according to the city.

Official grievances about cave-ins - defects defined by the city as "jagged holes" and problems with manhole covers and catch basins - totaled 17,612 in fiscal year 2008, according to figures released last week.

In the same period last year, there were 10,268 complaints of cave-ins, which are cracked holes without a distinct foundation, unlike potholes, which have a visible bottom surface.

The city attributed the alarming jump in craters to Mayor Bloomberg's Street Conditions Observation Unit, dispatched last summer to tour city streets and report quality-of-life concerns on handheld devices.

"The city is being more proactive in reporting incidents through the SCOUT program," said Michael Saucier, spokesman for the Department of Environmental Protection.

"And as a companion to this proactive reporting we're developing new, more efficient, ways to respond by working with the Department of Transportation, the mayor's Office of Operations, and 311."

Between last October and May, SCOUT reported about 6,000 cave-ins.


And now that they know where all the potholes are, they'll just ignore them.

Photo from Olde New York on Flickr

2 comments:

C said...

My favorite recurring pothole that takes forever to get fixed (and then comes back in a matter of weeks) is the one directly in front of Adabbo's office out here in Howard Beach.

Anonymous said...

Instead of building moronic "waterfalls" Commissar Death and Taxes is supposed to manage the city agencies.

But, that's soooooooo booring. No cocktail parties for fixing potholes.

The Commissar's ACS is out raiding and terrorizing parochial school kids and their families, claiming the kids - who never set foot in public schools - are now suddenly truants from those schools.

Gotta keep the UFT happy. The UFT hates parochial schools. Wants them closed anyway. Something about "teacher power".

Whatever. The little people will pick up the tab for those lawsuits. And, then there will be less money for the potholes. Whatever.

Where the next cocktail party? Has security been instructed to keep the little people away? They're just sooo icky!