City of Lubbock crews working to repair potholes

LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) - Driving down some Lubbock roads can be a bumpy ride as recent rain has caused potholes to form at many major intersections and residential roads.

Mike Gilliland with the City of Lubbock tells KCBD crews are working every day to repair Lubbock streets.

“Everybody knows, everybody drives the streets. We all drive the streets and we see how many more potholes there are than normal,” Gilliland said.

Gilliland says no one is more aware of the potholes than the city’s streets maintenance department. He says more are popping up because of the weeks of rainfall.

“It gets things muddy and soft in the bottom of that below the asphalt pavement. That asphalt starts to move and give way and eventually it’s gone and leaves a big hole,” Gilliland said.

The city repairs roughly 10,000 potholes a year, and now that the weather is warming up, Gilliland says crews have repaved 177 potholes in the last ten days.

“During this wet weather, we have had some of these we have to react to. They are in the wheel path of a car and if you hit it, it’s bad,” Gilliland said.

Gilliland says the city has two pothole-filling trucks to permanently fix those holes, but the city also has multiple crews out that are temporarily filling holes as they work to get caught up.

“Every pick-up, every flatbed that we’ve got has some sort of mix on it that we can get out there and get a hole filled. It is a very temporary patch just to make sure no one hurts themselves,” Gilliland said.

Crews will be permanently repairing all of the holes over the next couple of weeks. However, Gilliland says the city needs your help finding them.

“Keep calling that dispatch number and the dispatch people will get these work orders written up and out to our guys. As the citizens call, our goal is to get that citizen’s complaint taken care of in two business days.,” Gilliland said.

If that complaint is not handled in a timely manner and your car is damaged, you can file a claim against the city.

“If this is an out-of-the-ordinary pothole and it has caused a lot of damage and we have known about it and we didn’t do anything, obviously file a claim with the city of Lubbock,” Gilliland said.

You can email pothole repair requests to streetdispatch@mylubbock.us or call dispatch at (806) 775-2608.

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