The city received three to four times the normal amount of requests to fill potholes during the rain-soaked months of December through March, but was still able to fulfill the requests at its normal rate, an official with the Los Angeles Bureau of Street Services said.
Gregg Spotts, an assistant director with the bureau, told a City Council committee that the heavy rain triggered some of the highest volumes of requests for service the bureau had ever seen.
“It was a very challenging period from December through March,” Spotts told the Public Works and Gang Reduction Committee.
In a typical month without storms, the city will receive between about 20 to 30 requests to fill potholes per day, Spotts said. But from January through March, the city received upwards of 100 requests per day.
As part of Mayor Eric Garcetti’s “back to the basics” theme along with an increased focus on technology, the city’s average response time for potholes last year was around 2.5 business days, about half of what it had been two years before.
Despite the increase in requests during the recent storms, the city was still able to complete all the requests within 2.5 days, Spotts said.
“I’m very pleased to say that we completed those pothole requests within an average of 2.5 working days, which is really an accomplishment,” Spotts said.
“The commitment we made to Mayor Garcetti in the first year of his first term was when we have volumes of up to 950 potholes a month, we would keep them under a monthly average of three working days. So this was triple to quadruple that volume, and we still kept that turnaround time.”
City workers also responded to 20 reports of mudslides during from December through March, Spotts said, with 30 to 40 percent of them in Council District 4, which includes the Hollywood Hills.
The mudslides included one on Laurel Canyon Boulevard that closed the heavily traveled road through the Hollywood Hills in January.
City Councilman David Ryu, who is on the committee and represents the 4th Council District, commended the Department of Public Works, which oversees the Bureau of Street Services, for its response to the mudslides.
“We had 20 mudslides, and four of them were well known because they caused lengthy closures, but 16 of them no one knew anything about because we had such a quick response,” Ryu said.
—City News Service