Colorado Springs repairs over 16,000 potholes in five-week citywide repair surge

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- Potholes have been a big priority for Mayor Yemi Mobalade since he took office three years ago.

And now, in the final year of his first term in office, he's making good on his campaign promise to reduce the number of potholes on city streets.

Late Thursday morning, the city held a media briefing to release results of a pothole saturation patrol, or "surge," that was announced in May.

Mobolade, who rode with The Road Warrior to a neighborhood pothole event earlier in the day, said that the surge resulted in 16,000 potholes filled.

"10,000 of them were in neighborhoods," he revealed.

Mobolade went to Haverhill Place in the Pinecliff neighborhood where a longtime resident, Carl Peterson, regularly reports potholes to the city.

"Our streets are scheduled for repaving over the next few years, Peterson explained, "So pothole repairs will help a lot. "I think the response rate is better. You need to report a pothole, rather than curse it. Cursing potholes doesn't fix them. I walk the neighborhood almost every day, I have a cell phone, and I report potholes."

The mayor patched a pothole while he was there.

The five-week operation devoted more time and resources to patching potholes.

Included in the effort was the purchase of two pothole repair trucks to replace the two oldest trucks in the fleet; officials said that some of the 13-truck fleet breaks down occasionally because of frequent use.

The surge had three objectives.

One was to place two pothole-repair trucks in each of the city's four public works districts to conduct "search and destroy" missions on any potholes they found.

The second was to perform maintenance paving: temporarily repaving streets with numerous potholes in a concentrated area, saving the time and effort of filling each pothole.

Streets chosen for maintenance paving are not part of this year's 2C expanded paving program.

The surge's third objective was gathering data to learn more specifics about the average response time for pothole complaints, as well as developing a "heat map" to show areas that are "hot spots" for potholes. 

Mobolade was asked if there will be future pothole surges.

"Definitely next year," he responded. "Would I like to do a second one this year? Absolutely. I haven't made that final decision yet. I'm assessing, weighing the risk. But in terms of next year, of course, I think this habit, this practice, feels right."