March 16, 2026
Provided Image/PennDOT
This year's rough winter led to an uptick in reports of potholes on roadways in the Philadelphia area. PhillyVoice used PennDOT's online reporting center to request a fix for a pothole in the intersection of Broad Street and Girard Avenue, shown above. The agency got the job done six days later.
For the better part of a year — and maybe longer — a demon of a pothole plagued Broad Street at the intersection of Girard Avenue in North Philly.
It was sneaky, maybe a few inches deep and a foot wide, but it had enough bite to slam and rumble a car rolling past SEPTA's trolly tracks in the left, southbound lane. The crater exposed a brick surface beneath the roadway surrounded by a patchwork of past efforts to make the lane more level.
There's a helpless, raging terror a car owner feels waiting for the tire light to activate after hitting a pothole. Philly's streets have enough anarchy to worry about without a pit of destruction on one of the city's main thoroughfares. Bob Saget, the late comedian and Temple University graduate, once turned our busted streets into a point of twisted pride. He touted that the city "has the best potholes in the United States," knowing it's better to laugh than cry about it.
I think Philadelphia has the best potholes in the United States.
— bob saget (@bobsaget) March 31, 2017
When PennDOT called on drivers to report potholes earlier this month, we decided it was high time for someone to fix the one at Broad and Girard. The agency has a customer care center to submit pothole reports online and a phone number — 1-800-FIX-ROAD — to call in locations where maintenance is needed.
Broad Street is part of a network of more than 3,500 miles of roads that PennDOT maintains in Philly and its surrounding counties, more than anywhere else in the state. Most of Philly's roads are managed by the city's Streets Department, which responds to 311 complaints for pothole repairs on local roads.
This year's grueling winter was especially bad for the region's roadways. Water expands when it freezes, turning small cracks in the street into bigger holes that get pummeled by traffic and the elements.
"We had a lot of freeze-thaw cycles, so that could definitely be contributing to the amount of potholes," PennDOT spokesperson Helen Reinbrecht said.
The Philly region's pothole problem becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when people don't report them to the state or the city. It turns out getting angry about potholes — and silently learning to avoid them, as many drivers did at Broad and Girard — can be more trouble than just asking for them to be fixed.
Sometimes, the responsibility for filling a pothole can be nuanced. Broad Street and Girard Avenue are both state routes, but the presence of SEPTA's Route 15 trolly complicates that intersection. After PennDOT received our report on March 5, officials said an inspector would need to examine the pothole to see how far it was from the tracks. Had it been closer, PennDOT might have referred the report to the city or SEPTA to complete the repair, as the agency attempts to do when complaints fall outside its domain.
Six days after we reported the pothole, PennDOT sent out a crew to spray-patch it on Wednesday afternoon.
PennDOT crews spray-patched a pothole on the southbound side of Broad Street at the intersection of Girard Avenue on March 11. PhillyVoice reported the pothole to the agency on March 5.
Spray-patching involves clearing the pothole of debris and then injecting it with a mix of asphalt emulsion and gravel. It's considered a durable, efficient and low-cost option that can last for years. And since PennDOT is getting slammed with reports of potholes, spray-patching helps crews quickly get through their checklists.
Since Broad and Girard is a major intersection, and the road surrounding the pothole is still a bumpy surface, PennDOT plans to do a more long-lasting mill repair at that location in the coming months.
"Due to the condition of the pothole, they wanted to do some measure of repair ASAP," Reinbrecht said.
Drivers traveling south on Broad Street toward City Hall will now have a smoother ride through the intersection of Girard Avenue after PennDOT repaired a pothole on the state road.
PennDOT spends about $9 million repairing potholes statewide every year. The average cost of a pothole repair on a state road in Philly is $6,119. For the five-county area, the average cost is $6,400. The agency launched its customer care center in 2018 to improve its detection and repair schedule.
"We do pothole repair year-round," Reinbrecht said. "We are patrolling. We are always looking out for potholes and needed maintenance. But also, with just our five counties in District 6, that's a lot of highway."
Already this year, District 6 had received 3,880 reports of potholes through March 7 and used 740 tons of asphalt for repairs in the region. Last year, the district received just over 3,600 reports of potholes through the end of March. The full-year total in 2025 was 10,529 customer concerns in the Philly area. Response times vary, but early spring is the best time to act while crews are freed up from winter duties.
"We do prioritize the major interstates and higher traffic roadways, but we take into consideration the reports," Reinbrecht said. "If we get a whole bunch on one street or about the severity of one specific pothole, we try to prioritize those as well."
The city's Streets Department said it has received more than 2,100 pothole service requests since the beginning of the year and had repaired nearly 14,000 individual potholes as of last Wednesday. The city declined to say how much it spends on average to repair a pothole.
"We ask residents to use 311 to report any roadway damage," spokesperson Chris Young said. "Streets Department inspectors follow up to verify the report and determine the type of repair needed. Not all roadway defects are potholes. Other types, including utility cuts or cave-ins, require different repairs."
In her annual budget proposal Thursday, Mayor Cherelle Parker called for a new retail delivery tax that would help fund more street repairs in the city. She said the Streets Department fixed more than 60,000 potholes in 2025, but conceded it still wasn't enough. The proposed 25-cent tax on app deliveries — charged to retailers — would raise $7.1 million for a dedicated "pothole squad" that actively patrols neighborhoods for roadway defects.
Parker's proposal would allow the city to hire 24 full-time employees to exclusively monitor and fix potholes year-round, a Streets Department spokesperson said.
An Inquirer analysis found it took the city an average of 15 days to fix potholes reported on 311 in the period between May 2024 and May 2025. By creating a pothole squad, the city aims to cut response times down to three business days.
The pothole at Broad and Girard was only one of thousands in Philly, but it's proof that saying something when you see something helps put your tax dollars to work. It only takes a few minutes, and your tires will thank you.
