Pothole Laziness

What is black, cracked, and might actually cause damage to your car?  All of you public transit advocates might be cheering at the fact that the villainous car might have a weakness, a form of kryptonite.  Well if you didn’t already guess, the hero in all of this is a pothole.  But if a car is your transportation preference, then you are in trouble because the roadways in Los Angeles are lined with potholes. 

Probably every person in Los Angeles has experienced the inconvenience of a pothole at least once in their lifetime.  (Realistically, probably more than one since I remember at least 3 distinctively.)  But in all of my pothole encounters, nothing tops the cluster of potholes in the intersection of Aviation Boulevard and Imperial Highway, right under the 105 freeway.  It is not just your average; run of the mill, foot wide hole in the ground, but literally the left lane (heading North up Aviation towards LAX) is so uneven and bumpy that you would think a bunch of groundhogs were nesting under the pavement.  Cars are forced to either drive straight across the pothole collection and risk damage to their car or swerve to the left, into the line of oncoming traffic.  (Wow, what great options! Either I damage my car or die!)  For over a year now, the street has remained in this condition, which is ridiculous.  I can’t believe that the potholes have still not been fixed.  How hard is it to fix a pothole? 

The culprit here is not the city, but the Los Angeles car drivers.  Hundreds of cars cross this intersection on a daily basis and I am guessing that not one of them has ever tried to alert the city to the street damage.  The City of Los Angeles is not a mind-reader and cannot keep an eye on every road in order to fix the damage within a moment’s notice, which is why they rely on the citizens of Los Angeles to keep them informed.  But if we don’t tell them about bring these potholes to their attention, then we as drivers cannot complain because we are responsible.  I admit that I have been driving down Aviation on a regular basis for over a year now, and I never once picked up the phone to put in a request.  Part of the reason was that I had no idea who to contact or what steps I needed to take in order to fix this problem.  I also have been so busy that I hardly have time to relax anymore.  I guess I assumed that one day someone would call it in and it would be fixed, since other potholes in my area have been fixed in a timely fashion.  But a year has past and no one has come to repave the road.  Instead of changing my route to school, I have decided to take a stand! 

Ironically, it is super easy to put in a request to have a pothole fixed.  You just have to call the Bureau of Street Services at (800) 996-CITY (2489) or fill out the service request form online.  Make sure that you know the cross streets of the pothole location and preferably the address of a nearby building.  Now no one can say they didn’t know what steps to take and will have to put in a service request.  Please help our roads stay in good condition and not deteriorate, since it is very expensive for the city to repave our roadways especially in lieu of the current California budget crisis.  I guarantee that the cluster of potholes on Aviation started out as a single pothole, which could have been avoided with a single phone call.

That is all for now, but I will keep you posted on what happens to the potholes.