City Streets so Bad That “Pothole Vigilantes” Secretly Repair Them at Night
There are certain areas of the country that know about the phenomenon of the pothole much better than others. For one reason or another, it seems as if keeping roads in good condition just isn’t on top of the priority list for lots of jurisdictions. If you ask the group that now goes by the name of “Pothole Vigilantes,” they would say that Oakland is one of these areas.
In fact, the crew thinks that Oakland does such a poor job of maintaining its streets that the Vigilantes head out in the middle of the night, using the cover of darkness to repair the streets when nobody is looking. It’s almost like they’re the opposite of criminals as they do good deeds, hoping that nobody catches them because they don’t exactly have permits.
The vigilantes say that they don’t really have a planned route on most nights but just decide to go and find potholes. They insist that the road conditions are so poor in their area that they don’t really need to plan things out because they’re pretty sure that they’ll find damage to the streets.
The group says that Oakland does have a plan and a $100 million budget that will take three years to fix the streets. However, they say that when a bag of blacktop is about $20 and takes them 10 to 15 minutes to fix the problem, they could probably do it in about a month or two with a budget of just $1 million. It really raises the question of what’s going on with all of this money and if that bureaucratic red tape is costing taxpayers a little bit more than it should.
In the 60-second documentary down below, we get to meet the Pothole Vigilantes and learn a little bit more about their mission which has been drawing quite a bit of attention.
