On a ragged stretch of road near the Coliseum in East Oakland, a
small crew of city workers gathered to fill dozens of potholes on a
recent Thursday morning. Six men and one woman from Oakland’s Public
Works Agency, clad in white hard hats and bright orange vests,
progressed west along 66th Avenue between International Boulevard and
San Leandro Street. It was the penultimate week of Oakland’s annual
“pothole blitz,” in which several crews were dispatched throughout the
city for the sole purpose of repairing potholes. Each of the city’s
three zones — north, central, and south — received two
weeks of undivided attention and around seven hundred newly repaired
potholes.
“The thing about the blitz is you can really see the difference,”
said Public Works Agency spokesperson Kristine Shaff. “It sends a
message that says, ‘We are here and we are working.'” And she’s right
— although the heavily trafficked stretch of 66th Avenue is in
dire need of a complete overhaul, its patchwork of former potholes
represents a beacon of municipal progress. Oakland’s Public Works
Agency lacks the money needed to grind and resurface overworked roads
like this — it lost 78 employees to budget cuts, in fact, the
very day 66th Avenue was addressed — and the situation could
worsen if a recent state proposal to siphon gas tax revenues from local
jurisdictions passes. Still, the department remains dedicated to
working with what it’s got, said Shaff.
In a city notorious for slow decision-making and budget constraints
on services, Oakland’s Public Works Agency is decidedly efficient when
it comes to pothole repair — thanks in part to the vigilant eyes
of local bicyclists. Through a fifteen-year-old campaign managed by the
East Bay Bicycle Coalition, as well as via a city hotline, bicyclists
can report potholes, debris, and other hazards that often shoot
straight to the top of street and sidewalk workers’ to-do lists.
“It can be invigorating, from the standpoint of getting things
resolved,” said Ian McDonald, the point person for the East Bay Bicycle
Coalition’s highly successful road hazard program. He knows where, how,
and to whom to report potholes, debris, and other dangers, and he knows
who will get the job done (leading the way are Dublin, Pleasanton, and
Fremont) and who will probably blow him off (Richmond and the more
tenuous jurisdictions of AC Transit and Waste Management are safe
bets). In many cases, his reputation precedes him: “They tend to
recognize me, because I’m such a pest and have been doing it all these
years.”
The program’s success can be measured in cities like Oakland, which
has made great strides in pothole repair in recent years, according to
McDonald, who has volunteered as the Oakland-based nonprofit bicycle
advocacy group’s official “hazard elimination guy” for the past decade.
Much of the improvement is due to the city’s new reporting system,
which employs a user-friendly, though occasionally buggy online form
that residents can use to alert the city to potholes and other hazards.
There are few other sites like it in the East Bay, said McDonald, and
it’s done wonders for the city’s accountability. Ninety percent of his
pothole reports are answered by a tracking number within a day, and
about 80 percent are resolved in a matter of weeks.
Oakland’s attention to hazard repair ramped up following a 1998
incident in which a bicyclist riding on a scenic road in Alameda
County’s Dublin Canyon caught his front wheel in the outermost slot of
an improperly designed storm drain. His bike came to an sudden stop and
he was thrown over the handlebars, landing on his head and severely
fracturing his neck. He wound up paralyzed. The bicyclist sued and won
a $9.5 million settlement after it was shown that the county had been
notified of the drain’s dangerous condition months before, yet did
nothing to fix it.
Spurred by the case, the City of Oakland proceeded to replace nine
hundred of its own potentially hazardous storm drains. The preemptive
strike owed at least as much to straight dollars and cents as it did to
civic goodwill. Although often disregarded by motorists and
pedestrians, parallel storm drains, potholes, and ruts pose significant
dangers to bicyclists — and, in cases where preexisting knowledge
of the hazard can be proven, significant liabilities to cities. So they
tend to be taken seriously.
Jennifer Stanley, one of two full-time bicycle and pedestrian
facilities coordinators for the City of Oakland, agrees that the East
Bay Bicycle Coalition’s hazard reports carry a certain heft. She
encourages bicyclists and other users to report directly to Public
Works rather than through the Bicycle Coalition’s site — at least
as a first resort. “If they don’t get service, EBBC could add value,”
she said. She also acknowledges that the Bicycle Coalition plays an
important role within Oakland’s street maintenance system as its eyes
and ears on the ground. “We aren’t everywhere,” Stanley said. “The city
is pretty darn big, so we definitely appreciate hearing about
potholes.”
With thousands of paying members throughout the East Bay, the
Bicycle Coalition is a sturdy organization, and its hazard elimination
program a well-oiled machine. Members and guests alike are encouraged
to report problems directly through its web site, including ruts and
potholes, dangerous drop-offs, trash and debris, improper signage, and
precarious railroad crossings. Some of the more diligent members report
every week or two, while others submit only once a year. All told, the
East Bay Bicycle Coalition pursues a couple hundred potholes and other
hazards in both counties every year.
“It keeps our name in front of the Public Works Department,” said
East Bay Bicycle Coalition executive director Robert Raburn. “A lot of
what advocacy involves is just the reminder that we’re there, looking
over their shoulder. We expect good behavior.” Even in the midst of a
recession and from famously sluggish cities like Oakland, that’s often
just what they get. More than any of the Bicycle Coalition’s other
campaigns, pothole reporting works. “I would say it’s our most
effective advocacy effort,” said Raburn. “It’s the one area we have had
success in since day one.”
That said, even the East Bay Bicycle Coalition has its limits, and
other groups have helped fill in the blanks. On May 2, nonprofit
journalism organization Spot.us organized
the We Hella Hate Potholes Bike Ride to locate and map as many potholes
as possible throughout Oakland in one afternoon. Rain kept most bikers
away, but the seven who did show identified more than fifty distinct
potholes. Pavement conditions are also a central and ongoing concern at
Walk Oakland Bike Oakland, an advocacy group geared toward
infrastructure development.
Then there’s Bob Dort, who commutes by bike from his home in Fremont
to his office in Los Altos once a week. On the morning of May 14, Bike
to Work Day, he made his first unofficial report to the East Bay
Bicycle Coalition: a tire and a scrap of sheet metal were impeding the
Dumbarton Bridge’s pedestrian and bicycle path. He hoped to learn who
was responsible for path maintenance, or perhaps brainstorm some sort
of adopt-a-bridge program. What Dort got was something else altogether,
something he never saw coming: When he returned across the bridge that
afternoon, the path was completely cleared.
