As city of Memphis crews scramble to fill dangerous potholes across the bluff city, a new online campaign is also alerting Memphians where to avoid the especially bad bumps.
Within the last week, several Memphians who are tired of the sudden, dangerous detours started a new ‘Pothole Alert’ Facebook page, and it’s spreading like wildfire.
The Facebook groups is now more than 500 people strong. One of them warned about a stretch of nearly a dozen potholes, several of them very deep, on Bartlett Road across from the Putt Putt, causing major headaches before city crews have filled them.
“It’s a problem that affects everyone,” said John Herold. “It’s extremely dangerous… Even the smallest pothole can cause a driver to deflect, cause a serious accident.”
Fed up with the persistent pothole problem in Memphis, last week Herold and several others started the Facebook page alerting drivers where to avoid and where to slow down.
“The problem gets solved a lot faster if there’s more talk about it,” said Herold. “If more people will take it upon themselves to help the city with the problem, it can’t help but fix it faster.”
Herold said the Facebook page also provides a time stamp of sorts, to monitor how quickly potholes are repaired after pictures are posted, and the poster reports the pothole to the city of Memphis.
“It gives us a chance to track the progress of the city and to make sure the work is being spread equitably throughout the city,” said Herold.
“I think that’s reflective of a city that cares about itself, we don’t want to have a city with pothole lined streets,” said Doug McGowan with the City of Memphis. “If people didn’t care they wouldn’t bother to post.”
Tuesday afternoon, McGowan updated the Memphis City Council about the pothole repairs; 18,242 of them filled since January 12th. McGowan said while Facebook pages are valuable, he urged everyone to report potholes city crews may have missed.
“The message is this, don’t assume that we know the pothole exists, you may hit it and be frustrated every day, there’s a chance we could miss it,” said McGowan. “We have many more that we need to fill, we’ll be able to fill them permanently now that the weather is better, we have 12 crews working around the clock to fill those potholes.”
City leaders are hopeful a strong majority of potholes will be filled by the end of this week, and nearly all will be taken care of by the end of the month.
To find out how you can report a pothole and check the progress of that pothole fill request, CLICK HERE.
