Valley to Get 24-Hour ‘Pothole Line’

Woodland Hills business leaders said Thursday that they will begin operating their own 24-hour telephone “pothole hot line” to help Los Angeles street repair crews locate potholes in the San Fernando Valley.

Beginning today, officials of the Woodland Hills Chamber of Commerce said, they will use a phone message recorder to collect complaints from callers throughout the Valley. A weekly list of reported pothole locations will be filed with the city’s Bureau of Street Maintenance, they added.

“Recurring Idea”

“This has been a recurring idea of chamber members,” said Glenn Bevilacqua, a Woodland Hills realtor who heads the chamber’s streets and highways committee. “It will supplement what the city’s doing and save people a toll call.”

The telephone number will be 999-0725, chamber officials said.

The move was welcomed Thursday by David Reed, assistant director of city street maintenance.

“We have a toll-free weekday number people in the Valley can call, 989-5661, but we’re happy to receive notification of potholes from any source. We can’t see all of them out there,” Reed said.

“We fill hundreds of potholes every day. But we find more of them ourselves than we get calls on. Maybe people in the Valley will find it more convenient to call the chamber and report holes than to call us.”

Although Woodland Hills leaders said they began planning their pothole phone service in mid-January, today’s planned start-up comes on the heels of the city’s “Operation Pothole” repair effort, begun three weeks ago. The first day the city’s pothole telephone number was in operation, more than a thousand complaints were received.

Street maintenance officials said the number of complaints has slacked off since then, although no totals are yet available.

A similar effort in 1983 resulted in 40,000 potholes being repaired in a month, compared with the usual 15,000.

Reed said the city’s 24 regular pothole repair crews have been kept busy by a backlog of pothole reports since the city’s phone lines were opened. Ten of the crews are assigned to the Valley.

“Generally, the Valley streets are in better condition than the rest of the city because it’s a newer area and it doesn’t have the same heavy trucking patterns or bus routes,” Reed said. “Newer streets have usually been designed to withstand weight better.”

Same Repair Goal

Although quiet residential streets may go as long as 40 years without needing repaving, major streets require resurfacing about every 22 years. The busiest thoroughfares need repaving every 12 or 13 years, Reed said.

He said the city’s crews will seek to repair potholes within 24 hours of the chamber’s report, the same goal set for pothole reports phoned directly to the city.

Bevilacqua said he has no “favorite” pothole that he will report today to help break in the special chamber line.

“I live pretty close to where I work, and Topanga Canyon Boulevard, the street I take, is always pretty well maintained,” he conceded.