Oakland's pothole season started three weeks early

Pavement requests are running 40% above the five-year average for this week of the year — and the response queue is already stretching.

The Filed desk · 6:00 AM PT · Aug 30 · 3 min read

Pothole season in Oakland used to start in late September. This year the pavement requests started climbing in the first week of September — three weeks early, and 40% above the five-year average for this week.

What's driving it: the 311 data splits pavement complaints across a few categories, and two of them — "Pothole" and "Street Pavement Condition" — together account for 1,142 requests in the last 30 days alone. That's the highest 30-day total for this point in the year since the dataset began tracking category-level detail in 2021.

The early start matters for two reasons. First, the response queue: the median time to first action on a pavement request is 9 days at this volume, and it stretches to 14 in the corridors with the most requests. Second, the budget: street repair is funded by the year's paving program, and an early season draws down the same pool.

The neighborhoods seeing the most requests this month: Sobrante Park, the MacArthur corridor, and the flatlands east of Lake Merritt — the same three areas that topped the list last season.