SAN DIEGO — San Diego’s pothole problem seems to be at an all-time high. Recent rain has done some extensive damage to our roads.
However, the City of San Diego said it has a plan now that it's sunny. Complaints have skyrocketed on the city's Get It Done app.
CBS 8 compiled the data from the app. It shows pothole complaints are already much higher this year than in 2021 and 2022.
During a briefing on Thursday, Mayor Todd Gloria says the city will be aggressively tackling the pothole problem now that the weather has brightened up.
Some streets that will be getting full repaving work include La Jolla Parkway, La Media Road in Otay Mesa, Convoy Street in Kearny Mesa, and Azucar Yay in Rancho Bernardo.
Part of the city's approach to potholes is ARAN, the automatic Road Analyzer van.
CBS 8 is Working For You to understand better how the technology works to improve San Diego’s 3,000 miles of roads.
San Diego’s Transportation Director, Bethany Bezak, shows CBS 8 the gadgets on the utility van.
“These are lasers allowing us to capture potholes and cracks and surface issues on the road,” said Bezak.
The cameras and lasers measure the road's smoothness or roughness and the depth of the cracks or potholes. Bezak says it’s better than Google.
“We are collecting more information than Google to help us make good decisions," said Bezak.
The city says the $500,000 technology is contracted through Fugro based in Texas. Bezak says it will get the city back on track to document the road's overall condition report or OCI every four years.
The data will rank the roads well, fair, or poor to give them an idea of what repairs are needed.
“The fair category is the sweet spot. It allows us to prioritize some funding to do some maintenance activities like slurry seals and protective finishes that coat the roadway to help them last a little bit longer so they don't get into poor condition, which costs even more money to do the full repair,” said Bezak.
The city said by the end of the week, road assessments from Claremont Mesa Boulevard down to Otay will be finished, and then ARAN will assess the beach area and the northern part of the city. The assessment should be completed by the summer.
The city council will receive the report by the fall to plan on budgeting repairs to make it a smoother ride for those on the road.
A spokesperson for Mayor Gloria said he is focused on data-driven planning to maintain the roads effectively.
The updated condition assessment data will inform an updated street repair work plan that will position the City to identify the level of funding needed to improve and maintain our network's overall state of repair.
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