There are holes in this story.
Earlier this month, Mayor Bloomberg donned a fluorescent vest, picked up a shovel and helped a crew of Department of Transportation workers mark the 2 millionth pothole filled in by the city since Hizzoner took office in 2002. But the milestone has hit a few bumps.
The Post last week surveyed 25 locations across four boroughs where the city claimed to have recently repaired potholes and found 11 sites still resembled moonscapes that Neil Armstrong would be wary to walk on.
And while repair work appeared to have taken place at the other locations, nine of the jobs were poorly done or only partially completed.
Of the 25 “completed” sites, only five were adequately fixed.
“Anytime the mayor wants to come with his shovel, tell him to call me,” fumed Phil Fox, taking a potshot at Bloomberg’s dubious benchmark.
The 53-year-old Staten Island resident has logged at least 50 pothole complaints with the city’s 311 system so far this year. He said he has also called the Mayor’s Office and DOT personnel, but the city has barely made a dent in the miles of bad road to which he has alerted them.
“We’re infested with potholes in all of the boroughs,” Fox said. “The city says the work’s completed, but it’s not completed.”
Residents can call 311 to notify the city of a street problem. The caller is then given a ticket number that can be tracked on a Web site.
According to DOT, it currently takes an average of two days to fix a hole, but in some cases as long as 30 days.
When a pothole has been filled, the 311 Web site marks the job as completed.
But The Post found 11 instances where the Web site stated work had been finished when it wasn’t. And some of the crater complaints were more than a month old.
A pothole reported on Feb. 5 at Arthur Kill Road and Kenilworth Avenue on Staten Island was listed as inspected and repaired by DOT on Feb. 6. But on Friday the intersection still had 3-inch-deep, rim-busting canyons.
A Feb. 23 complaint about potholes on Riverside Drive near West 162nd Street in Manhattan was listed as fixed on March 3. But last week the street was still a gantlet of deep fissures and caverns, slowing drivers to a crawl to avoid axle damage.
Even when it appeared that DOT had done some work, the jobs were poorly performed or only some potholes were filled.
A Feb. 16 complaint about Woodrow Road at Marcy Avenue on Staten Island was supposedly addressed two days later. But only one side of the street looks like it was fixed.
“I think these findings certainly raise a flag,” said Councilman James Vacca, chairman of the Transportation Committee. “People need to know that when they call 311, their complaints are taken seriously.”
DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan declined to comment directly on crater-gate, but admitted city streets have taken a pounding this year.
“With more than 40 inches of snow this winter, the weather has taken its toll on our roads, but our crews are out on the streets of the New York every day, making more repairs faster than ever,” she said.
According to DOT, cold weather can weaken the durability of the asphalt used for repair. The agency also said recent snowfall, plowing and thawing have caused new potholes, so the ones identified by The Post may have occurred after repair work had been done.