Mayor Bowser kicks off ‘Potholepalooza 2016’ at Forest Hills event

by Marlene Berlin

Those potholes on Brandywine near 30th Street NW never stood a chance.

DC's spring "fullscale war on potholes," #potholepalooza, starts w @MayorBowser @marycheh @DDOTDC LeifDormsjo pic.twitter.com/JEWX1u4H12

— bill rice (@ricebilldc) April 1, 2016

This is where Mayor Muriel Bowser, Council member Mary Cheh and DDOT Director Leif Dormsjo officially launched the 2016 Potholepalooza campaign on Friday, April 1st.

Mayor Bowser, Council member Cheh, and Director of DDOT Leif Dormsjo

ANC 3F Commissioners Mary Beth Ray and Sally Gresham, along with other neighbors, welcomed the mayor to our neck of the woods.

The mayor and Mary Beth Ray.

DC residents can request pothole repairs at any time throughout the year. And in fact, crews already have been busy repairing the potholes the winter left for us, filling 11,500 potholes in March alone. What’s different about Potholepalooza, which dates back to 2009, is the singular focus on getting residents to report the potholes and getting crews out to fill them within 48 hours instead of the more typical 72-hour response time.

The District is leasing this machine called the #pothole Killer to use during #Potholepalooza pic.twitter.com/m2Wj0Ivlv2

— Heather Curtis (@HeatherMCurtis1) April 1, 2016

The “Pothole Killer.”

And what’s different about THIS year is the technology used to map and respond to citizen requests. Dormsjo explained workers now have handheld devices with interactive mapping software that records requests as they come in. The software can then be updated on-site when the hole is fixed. This is technology that DDOT’s John Thomas, now chief performance officer, developed as former head of DDOT’s Urban Forestry division. Thomas saw this as a great advance over paper lists, which were cumbersome and difficult to keep up to date.

You can track requests and repairs here. Existing and repaired holes are mapped. Just click onto a dot and you will get the details.

To report a pothole, you have several options: