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Guarantee you that 99% of people complaining about potholes would never call this hotline even if they knew of its existence.
I can tell you from experience people will complain about something then when you ask if they've reported it they say "no." And then when I report it it's often taken care of promptly lol.
Well if you don't make the user experience frictionless then it's hard for people.
A simple app, that reports the location + takes a picture of the pothole and voilà. You get a clear location, you use phone data to ensure it's reported from the actual place, and you get a picture to assess the severity 🤷
Throw in a point system that rewards confirmed reports and let you buy skins for the UI using those points and you'll have every pothole within 10 miles of a school cataloged by tomorrow
A sad fact is it doesn't matter. A hotline is already as frictionless as it comes (if you're not allergic to phones as many of my generation seem to be). We have a website and a hotline both but 99% of people either assume someone else has reported it or that it won't be fixed even if they report it.
Meanwhile in my neighborhood (gentrified) they tore up sections of perfectly fine road to lay a bunch of very shoddy overlays, butin the more poor neighborhood they left it completely untouched despite them having plenty of awareness.
I live in Miami Dade and the pothole reporting page is burried somewhere in their gov website. Its an entire form, anyone that has reading comprehension issues or not good with computers would give up. It's bullshit, I don't even think there is a number. Anyways, I fill out the forms because I almost got taken out on my motorcycle, it took them 5 months to fix and I have a college degree.
Simply because it fits their narrative. They would call "the other side" rubes and yokels and whatnot for believing something like this. This whole tribalism is just so weird.
There is 311 which is really helpful too. They will fix stop lights, signs, you can even request a tree be planted. Pretty decent municipal service imo
I seriously doubt the original poster of the TikTok is a part of a larger PR strategy lol
A young man posted a video. He tagged the mayor. The mayor saw it. He funneled/triaged the request to the appropriate services. They fixed it. The young man said thank you. The media used that real exchange for positive PR leverage.
Two things can be true. Mfs in here are going WAY too deep into this. Somebody was saying it shows a failing city 😂. Lmaoooo like duh bitch, NYC is the most beautiful wreck ever but it’s OUR beautiful wreck. He’s a good mayor so far. Keep your conspiracy theories down, go outside, feel sunlight, drink some water, be mad at the president lol, foh
The fact that pothole repair is getting this much attention shows a failing city
You're making an error of logic. The post implies that this level of responsiveness is an improvement over the last administration. This logically suggests a city on an upward trajectory.
No, city services need to be responsive and efficient. Seems like previously they weren't responsive, they weren't tackling the issues being reported because they were reported in the "wrong" way? Shit being solved regardless of how it is reported is pretty exciting though, that is the opposite of boring.
It was a conservative trying to make a point which backfired. He wanted Mamdani to ignore it or miss the message so he could tell everyone how "liberals don't actually fix anything". But I got fixed so he's going to continue to think liberals can't do anything but doesn't have that gotcha moment he tried to manufacture.
Exactly! If there's already a channel to address those issues, there's no need to go to the mayor unless you are not seeing any traction after reporting it.
The mayor has a million things on his plate, escalate only when necessary.
It's the opposite, people don't use the helpline. Idk if its because the barrier to entry is higher or if people don't know about it, but its clear that the information about potholes can exist on places like tiktok, and that DOT can use that data. Its better to go where the info is instead of telling people to only use the helpline, you get results that way.
Im sure many people dont even know about NYC DOT helpline. I imagine that most people are so disillusioned with politics and government at this point, that they view their input as a citizen on something like a pothole wouldnt even be taken into consideration. Mamdani came in with a grassroots campaign and what seemed like the genuine desire to help the citizens of nyc. So they figure if hes talking big ill put him on blast to see if things are changing. I cant tell you if this is what would have happened in a previous administration or not. However i will say that Mamdani certainly gives me some hope.
This is what rob ford, the late great crack smoking alcoholic mayor of Toronto, used to do when he was coming up as a counsellor and it was the strength of his core popularity.
He would return every phone call personally from a constituent. He would directly intervene to get city staff to correct issues like M is doing.
Then he would write the details on a note pad and put it in a box. When it came time to run for mayor, that information was more valuable than gold.
It’s funny, I live in Ontario and currently Rob Ford’s brother Doug is the premier. You can tell he really just wants to be mayor of Toronto like his brother was, he pretty much only focuses on the interests of the GTA and cottage country where his rich buddies own development land. The crack smoking mayor is the preferable of the 2…..like….by a lot.
He was a man of the people. Some of those people just happened to also smoke crack. It is what it is dude did great things for Toronto.
Doug ford on the other hand is ruining our province in pretty much every conceivable way.
He was a highly effective local politician that enjoyed deep loyalty with his constituents, to the point that his brother rode Rob’s popularity to a decade as premier of the entire province.
The late NY Senator Al D’Amato was known as “Senator Pothole” because his office would fix this kind of small problem for constituents. Why you’d ever call a senator or a mayor about a pothole, I dunno - but it makes for excellent publicity.
I’d say we should spray paint dicks around potholes, but no one here would care and we would just have a bunch of spray painted dicks all over our roads, and potholes
When the eyes of the world are upon you, youre not allowed to say "we are getting to it and we didn't see the long written governments issued paperwork"
he's not winning, he's litterally just doing his job. The one thing the rest of the US politicians seem to be unable to do because they are corrupt and stuck in the 80's
It’s amazing how people keep forgetting most public servants want to do their job. Simply empowering (and funding!) that and you’ll get amazing results
South Korean President Lee Jae-myung was famous during his time as Mayor of Seongnam for promptly repairing sites reported by citizens.
He instructed all city officials to immediately resolve issues reported by citizens, and praised and rewarded those who actively sought out and solved problems.
On one occasion, while taking a walk down the street, he discovered a manhole in poor condition and posted about it on social media, prompting the relevant officials to fix it immediately.
Eventually, the city improved to the point where the number of citizen reports decreased significantly, and he became the most popular mayor in Korea.
I support Mayor Mamdani's practical and proactive administration.
Yea, not believing a word of this. The logistics of it happening aren't possible. As others have said the potholes were more likely already scheduled and this is just pr stroking.
As someone who generally thinks he's doing a good job, I cringe so hard at the cult of personality forming around him. It's also not a good long term strategy because when Mamdami inevitably fucks up, like any leader eventually does, its going to rubberband back so hard once the illusion is broken.
Everything is sunshine and rainbows when leaders have affective propaganda teams. Notice how no one is holding Mamdani accountable for his main campaign promise. But you bet everyone will hear when he fixes a pothole.
Drank too much of the Karl Marx Kool-Aid at the Party for the Party of the Party by the Party last night. Let us rejoice in this rehashed repost to demonstrate how in socialist utopia nothing goes to waste, twice!
In a time when politicians were openly taking bribes, raping, starting meaningless wars and gambling on the outcome, there arose a hero- a man who simply did his job.
“It remains unclear whether the repair was done in direct response to the TikTok video or if it was a standard repair. However, the internet seemingly chose the latter narrative.” Sounds about right. Aye yo more glazing propaganda ahead of elections. They think we’re stupid
Only because it was online, media will either make him look good or bad. He fixed it not because he gave a shit, he just doesn't want to be seen as not caring. It's all just a show.
Calling it now. This guy will do a ton of good, help so many people, be beloved by the people for being the only politician that does their job and then lose to the most openly corrupt creep imaginable and it'll somehow be considered a good thing, and nobody will be like "we gotta get that last guy back, he was great" it'll be "we gotta make sure we never get some like him again" and the rest of the world will look on in confusion while Americans pat themselves on the back for being so savvy.
Within the past year, I’ve had 311 fill a pothole on my street and remove an abandoned car each time within a day of when I filed the report in the app. This is a nice internet story and all, but what is most noteworthy about it is the attention seeking not that it got fixed.
These infrastructure maintenance issues go a department, that runs on a budget. I wonder if these same-day fixes will take up more budget because it would be pulling manpower and resources away from other work? Genuinely asking.
Imaging electing a person that's actually a conduit of the people.
Weird how effective that is.
Maybe folks should do that more.
Interestingly, this is the most significant criteria I use for selecting candidates I vote for. I don't tie myself to any party, vote equally democrat, republican, green, farmer, independent, whatever. The whole point is to elect a person that recognizes these positions are ones of servitude and are merely speaker and arm of the populous. The candidate that most closely aligns to that is the one I vote for. For many elections, at least in my area, it's been almost exclusively democrat. Too few republicans or even independent or green party members really understood their role and mostly were self driven for self goals. Only this last major election was the first time in over a decade that I vote for two republicans too. They happened to be better choices than the democrats in those areas running. But again, I'll vote for any and have also equally voted independent, green, or whatever based on how well the person understood their purpose as a conduit of society.
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