Pothole vigilantes

From 'Pothole Vigilantes' are covertly fixing Oakland roads in the middle of the night by Alix Martichoux.

We don't need to remind Oakland drivers their streets are some of the worst in the country, costing locals an extra $1,049 a year in car maintenance on average.

The problem has prompted two Oakland residents to go rogue, pulling off covert missions to patch potholes in the middle of the night. They've dubbed themselves the "Pothole Vigilantes" and show off their work on an Instagram page by the same name.

From the looks of their social media activity, their "vigilantism" is pretty new; the first post is from April 21. So far they've tackled potholes at Moss Avenue and Harrison Street, Perkins Street and Van Buren Avenue and the Oakland Avenue offramp coming off I-580 — all in the Adams Point and Grand Lake neighborhoods north of Lake Merritt.

I sympathize with the Oaklanders. My city is similarly cursed with that unfortunate combination of incompetence and corruption which drives ordinary citizens to unusual acts.

Here in Atlanta I am unaware of Pothole Vigilantes but we do have something more celebratory. We have Pothole Birthday Parties. After two or three years, once we know the City is truly just going to ignore the growing and dangerous problem, neighbors will occasionally have annual birthday parties for their local pothole until it eventually gets filled.

Oakland government responds to citizen initiative in just the way you might expect.

When asked about the unauthorized roadwork, Oakland Public Works empathized with the problem at hand, but made it clear that Oakland residents shouldn't be taking to the streets to themselves.

"This kind of activity tells us what we often hear from our community: They are frustrated and fed up with the pavement condition in their neighborhood," said Sean Maher, a spokesperson for the department. "We can't recommend anyone do this work themselves, not least because it raises safety issues while people are working in the streets."

Its OK for city government to ignore a dangerous problem but it is forbidden to citizens to try and fix that problem because their actual solution might be more dangerous than ignoring it?

But there is good news on the horizon.

Maher made a plea for patience, saying more resources to fix roads are on the way. The city council is set to vote on a $100 million plan to repave streets over the next three years. The money would come from Measure KK, approved by voters in 2016.

The bad news is that that $100 million is likely to disappear into some pocket and not result in filled holes.

In Atlanta, the City government pleaded and threatened citizens until a special $250 million bond was floated to catch-up on long delayed routine maintenance of roads, including pothole filling. At the time of the bond referendum there was a lot of concern about mismanagement of the funds and so a special tracking mechanism was promised so that everybody could see where the money was going.

Promised, but not implemented. Instead of fixing roads the proceeds of the bond went to white elephant projects and vanity projects. Some tens of millions to a new pool here, some tens of millions to some nice trails for developers there. All of a sudden someone looked around and most the money was gone and most of the roads were unfixed. They went through an elaborate and prolonged exercise to decide which roads might get fixed with some of the remaining money. And they still siphoned off more for vanity projects.

I suspect Oakland residents will see the same.

"With finite resources the City cannot always respond immediately to every request – but every complaint is tracked, and the more data City leaders have about where residents' issues are located, the better they can organize City resources to tackle long-term issues," says a press release by Oakland Public Works.

As Austin Powers was wont to say.