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The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel mapped the records of 11,000 pothole repairs done in the first half of this year.
See the mapping project here.
The investigation found:
Potholes in mostly minority census tracts took an average of 11 days to repair, while potholes in mostly white census tracts took seven days.
Potholes are not the most serious problem plaguing Milwaukee. But the city's many pockmarked streets can harm the quality of life for those commuting to work and force unfortunate drivers to shell out hundreds of dollars to repair damage to their vehicle.
What's more, potholes and how the city responds to them are as close as many people come to watching local government in action.
City officials say they set priorities based on several factors. A top concern is keeping heavily traveled roads safe for drivers. But the Journal Sentinel found that major roads on the north, such as Silver Spring Drive and Hampton Ave., were fixed more slowly than less traveled residential streets farther south.
The Journal Sentinel discovered the disparity in service by reviewing a city database of more than 11,000 pothole repair locations from January to mid-July. Hundreds of repairs took longer than a month from the time a complaint was logged.
An analysis of pothole fixes in the city also found:
- Residents who live on or north of Capitol Drive waited the longest for pothole repairs. It took crews an average of 14 days to fix potholes on or north of Capitol Drive, where more than three-fourths of census tracts are predominantly minority. But to the south, where 56 percent of census tracts are majority white, repairs took about six days -- even for twice as many potholes.
- The city fell behind as complaints mounted during a difficult winter. The disparity in service was greater during the peak season of February through April, when repairs averaged 18 days north of Capitol Drive and eight days to the south. The gap narrowed during less busy months to a four-day difference.
- Pothole repairs took the longest in Alderman Ashanti Hamilton's District 1 on the north side, averaging 15 days per pothole. That's five times as long as in Alderman Tony Zielinski's 14th District in the south, where potholes took about three days to fix.
- The two district managers in charge of dispatching pothole repair crews both live in south side neighborhoods that are among the fastest served when potholes are identified.
Responding to the Journal Sentinel's analysis, Mayor Tom Barrett said the city could have done a better job distributing its repair crews equally.
