I know I am not the only one with frustrations with our 311 system. I’m sharing my story here in hopes you will share yours so we can help the city improve.
A year and a half ago I was putting stuff in the trunk of my car. When I stepped off the curb at a bad angle, my foot landed on the edge of a pothole– a pothole that 311 keeps filing away as “complete,” despite the fact that it keeps growing every winter.
Back to my clumsiness: My foot landed on the edge of the pothole and next thing I knew, I was lying on the street between my parked car and another, unable to get up, and in too much pain to think straight. After a very bumpy ambulance ride to GW, I was told that I had dislocated my ankle and broken the tibia AND the fibula. My first time breaking a bone and I broke two! Not just that, but I got heavy pain killers, scheduled surgery, and a recovery period of several months. I also learned that you should not take an ambulance unless it is absolutely necessary because it is a very expensive ride: That’s another broken system for another post.
The offending pothole had formed after some curbwork on my street many years prior. We reported it to the city a number times of but it never got fixed, possibly because it’s between the curb and parked cars so the pothole patrol people kept missing it.
Since breaking my ankle, I had renewed motivation to get the hole fixed. I have put in numerous requests that mysteriously get marked as “complete” within a couple of weeks. But the pothole remains.
I included pictures of the pothole and very specific details about the location, but that didn’t work either.
I even tweeted pictures of my broken ankle and the x-rays, and while @311 responded on Twitter, the pothole continued to taunt me.
I considered more creative solutions, but I didn’t have a small child to place in it to show just how nasty this hole is, and while one British town’s artistic tactics seemed effective and amusing, I feared the parents on my block would be less than amused.
Finally, after getting yet another notice that my request was resolved when the pothole was clearly still there, I emailed the Ward 6 liaison for Mayor Bowser’s office and my contacts at Councilmember Charles’ Allen’s office. Less than 24 hours later, a truck was in front of my house fixing my pothole.
All fixed! Yay?
No, not “yay.” 311 is supposed to be there to have requests routed to the appropriate agency so I don’t have to bother my Councilmember or the Mayor’s office. They have more important things to focus on like schools, crime, homelessness, etc. So why did I have to waste their time with this? Why did so many of my requests get marked as complete when they were not?
The cynic in me thinks that this is an intentional act by 311 to boost the number of resolved issues. But it is just as likely a just a result of the many issues with our local government, starting with the fact that we have so many different agencies that it’s not always clear who is in charge of what.
What I mean by that is that my pothole may not be a “pothole” at all by their definition. It may really be a curb repair, which is a different line item in the 311 reporting app. And different crews seem to inspect and fix these, making it easy for one group to simply take a quick look and mark my issue as “resolved” because it isn’t their issue to deal with.
When I asked Councilmember Allen about my concerns about 311, he responded, “On the systems side, we’ve found big problems with DDOT’s 311 system. We’ve been working on it with them – and they have recognized the problems as well. They’ve got some dedicated folks working on unraveling the problem, and I’ll be digging deeper as we hold their oversight hearing in the coming days.” At least that is something, and I plan to listen to these upcoming hearings so I can see how my story can help fix the problem.
So here’s my call to everyone reading this: make sure your experiences are shared so that the city knows how broken this system is. 311 is a great concept, and if it can be fixed, it could be a great asset to all of us.
Have you found disappointment when using 311 or reaching out to other city services? Share your story and even better, share any solutions you have found!