Why this exists

New Yorkers file tens of thousands of pothole complaints with 311 every year, but there's no public map showing all of them, or whether they ever got fixed. This site puts every complaint on one searchable map and tracks the city's response over time.

How to read the map

Where the city's data falls short

311 records are the best public source there is, but they aren't the ground truth:

• Stale "open" complaints. Thousands of complaints have sat open for months or years. Some are real backlog, and some are records nobody updated.
• "Closed" isn't always "fixed." A complaint can be closed as a duplicate, or because an inspector found no pothole. A pothole marked fixed can also come back.
• About half of complaints have no exact location. 311 records many complaints as a stretch of street ("Bedford Ave between X and Y") without map coordinates. This site finds that block on NYC's street map and places those complaints along it, drawn as lighter dots. Tested against complaints with known locations, the block is right to within a few meters.

Community photo checks

This is where you come in. Tap any pothole on the map, choose Still there or fixed? Add a photo, and post a photo: still there, fixed, or never there. Each photo is reviewed before it goes live. Once approved, it appears on that pothole, the dot switches to what the photo shows, and it gets a blue ring. If the city updates its record after your photo, the newer information wins.

Found a pothole that isn't on the map at all? Use Report a pothole: drop a pin, add a photo, and once it's reviewed it appears as a diamond. Please report it to 311 too, since that's how the city schedules repairs.

Photos are shrunk and stripped of hidden location data before they're uploaded, and your email is never shown to anyone.

Data

Live from NYC Open Data (311 Service Requests). Address search by NYC GeoSearch. Basemap by OpenFreeMap and OpenStreetMap contributors.

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