article · 2026-06-02 · ~4 min · live data

Philadelphia's pothole season

Since 2022-01-01, Philadelphia residents filed 68,819 street defect reports through 311. They don't land evenly across the city — and once filed, the wait for a response isn't equal either. Some ZIP codes close in roughly a week. Others wait more than seven.

Where they cluster

The heaviest pothole reports concentrate along high-traffic corridors and in neighborhoods with older road infrastructure. Each hex cell below aggregates all pothole repair calls filed within roughly 200 meters.

map loads on scroll…

Darker cells carry a heavier report load. Hex bins aggregate roughly 200m radius. Source: Carto / OpenDataPhilly.

The freeze-thaw cycle

Philadelphia road surfaces take the most damage during the late-winter freeze-thaw window — when temperatures repeatedly cross freezing, water trapped in road cracks expands and breaks the asphalt. Pothole reports reliably spike in late winter and early spring. The single busiest month in this dataset was March.

Street defect reports · monthly · since 2022-01-01

Tap to expand with x-axis labels.

Summers are quieter — not because roads improve, but because the main damage mechanism (water in cracks freezing and expanding) is absent. The cycle resets every winter.

Not every ZIP waits the same

Once a street defect report is filed, the city's response time varies widely by ZIP code. The fastest ZIPs see a median closure in roughly a week. The slowest wait more than seven weeks — an 8× gap for the same type of complaint. The map below shades each ZIP by median days from report to closure; darker means longer waits.

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median days to close · street defect · since 2022-01-01

Slowest ZIP codes

19142

49d
19143

42d
19145

37d
19125

37d
19147

36d
19148

36d
19104

35d
19146

35d
19134

35d
19139

34d

0 49d max

Response time differences can reflect staffing, geography, complaint queue depth, or how a report was categorized. What they measure is the gap between a resident filing and the city marking it closed — a gap that varies far more than a single citywide average suggests.

The cases still open

Not every report results in a repair. A significant share of street defect reports filed since 2022-01-01 remain open — the city's current repair queue, visible in real time. A handful of ZIP codes shoulder a disproportionate fraction of those unresolved cases.

unresolved street defect reports · since 2022-01-01

Open cases by ZIP

19148

159
19146

151
19143

147
19147

135
19145

130
19134

114
19121

110
19125

104
19104

78
19124

75

0 159 max

An open case is one the city has acknowledged but not yet marked closed. Heavy backlog in a ZIP doesn't mean the city is ignoring it — it may reflect volume that outpaces repair crews, or cases that were filed but not yet triaged. The ranking shows where the queue is deepest as of this build.

When people call it in

Pothole reports cluster in the morning commute window — people hit them on the way to work and call 311. Weekdays see substantially more reports than weekends, and overnight calls nearly disappear.

day of week × hour of day · since 2022-01-01

Street defect reports

Street defect reports
	12a	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12p	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11
Sun	171 calls	115 calls	154 calls	102 calls	69 calls	25 calls	24 calls	19 calls	10 calls	13 calls	33 calls	70 calls	119 calls	177 calls	204 calls	248 calls	238 calls	264 calls	232 calls	281 calls	234 calls	224 calls	198 calls	196 calls
Mon	170 calls	160 calls	156 calls	127 calls	61 calls	24 calls	14 calls	42 calls	84 calls	29 calls	73 calls	193 calls	795 calls	1,109 calls	1,174 calls	1,058 calls	1,115 calls	1,157 calls	1,158 calls	1,086 calls	939 calls	779 calls	618 calls	434 calls
Tue	302 calls	258 calls	257 calls	155 calls	63 calls	69 calls	34 calls	16 calls	59 calls	44 calls	125 calls	263 calls	780 calls	1,100 calls	1,171 calls	1,159 calls	1,177 calls	1,132 calls	1,059 calls	1,109 calls	1,021 calls	806 calls	597 calls	390 calls
Wed	313 calls	221 calls	209 calls	156 calls	51 calls	33 calls	28 calls	12 calls	19 calls	36 calls	93 calls	199 calls	741 calls	1,043 calls	1,122 calls	1,188 calls	1,171 calls	1,044 calls	1,122 calls	1,162 calls	947 calls	721 calls	527 calls	457 calls
Thu	267 calls	216 calls	166 calls	110 calls	69 calls	44 calls	29 calls	28 calls	36 calls	48 calls	69 calls	208 calls	703 calls	1,097 calls	1,103 calls	1,144 calls	1,071 calls	1,048 calls	1,038 calls	1,057 calls	902 calls	689 calls	606 calls	427 calls
Fri	282 calls	185 calls	181 calls	152 calls	90 calls	34 calls	24 calls	26 calls	12 calls	28 calls	72 calls	182 calls	642 calls	1,005 calls	1,000 calls	1,074 calls	970 calls	999 calls	984 calls	956 calls	819 calls	621 calls	387 calls	306 calls
Sat	204 calls	141 calls	141 calls	96 calls	74 calls	30 calls	22 calls	18 calls	12 calls	24 calls	37 calls	99 calls	130 calls	211 calls	264 calls	302 calls	336 calls	305 calls	294 calls	273 calls	256 calls	235 calls	190 calls	183 calls

The day-of-week pattern is consistent: Tuesday through Thursday are the heaviest reporting days. Mondays carry some spillover from weekend damage that wasn't reported until the workweek.

View data by ZIP code

Top 20 Philadelphia ZIP codes by street defect requests since 2022-01-01. Median wait and open cases shown where available (closed cases only for wait calculation).

Rank	ZIP code	Requests	Median wait	Open cases
1	19146	3,700	34.9d	151
2	19148	3,219	36.0d	159
3	19147	3,116	36.1d	135
4	19143	2,915	41.9d	147
5	19134	2,887	34.7d	114
6	19145	2,571	37.0d	130
7	19125	2,150	36.9d	104
8	19140	2,103	20.9d	72
9	19139	1,931	33.6d	71
10	19104	1,871	34.9d	78
11	19120	1,825	21.8d	—
12	19124	1,810	30.2d	75
13	19111	1,700	19.0d	64
14	19121	1,600	21.5d	110
15	19130	1,561	28.0d	61
16	19131	1,423	26.9d	74
17	19122	1,407	27.0d	—
18	19123	1,335	26.9d	62
19	19144	1,318	6.1d	—
20	19151	1,287	33.1d	58