Notes / 311 / Potholes
How is the city doing with potholes?
Data through August 13, 2026· collected daily from the city’s records
113 pothole repair requests are open. The median one was submitted in July 2026. That’s down from 163 a year ago. Requests that did close took a median of 26 days.
The city’s “Pothole on Road” service — pothole repairs handled by Public Works. Every number traces to the individual requests.
Open requests over time
Open pothole requests at each month boundary, 2022–present. Dashed line is the trailing 12-month average.
Total outstanding wait
Add up how long every open request has been waiting and you get the backlog's total outstanding wait, measured in ticket-years: 85 as of August 2026. The line rises when the backlog grows or its requests age, and falls only when long-waiting requests are closed. The count above can fall even while the oldest requests remain open; this line can’t.
How long closed requests took
Of requests closed in each month, the median days from submission to closure. A month spent closing old backlog reads high; a large batch of quick closures reads low.
Closed on time, by the city’s own deadline
The city’s current target for pothole requests is 14 days — a due date set on each request when it’s filed. Each bar shows, of requests closed that month, the share closed on or before its due date. Per RVA311, the target is a department-level workload figure that may be refined over time, not a per-request deadline published to the resident. Same measure as the citywide deadline note.
Monthly counts range from 20 to 803 closed requests, so single months swing; hover for exact counts.
Where the open requests are
Open requests, the share still open past one year, and how old the open queue is, by area. Request counts reflect what residents report.
- The Fan91%34d
- The Museum District82%120d
- Blackwell60%13d
- Three Chopt50%32d
- Huguenot50%6d
- Scott's Addition40%14d
- Mary Munford30%20d
- Upper Shockoe Valley30%2d
- VCU30%5.3y
- Byrd Park30%13d
- Monroe Ward30%10d
- Manchester20%7d
- Jackson Ward20%22d
- Malvern Gardens20%3d
- City Center20%14d
55 neighborhoods have open pothole requests; the list shows 15 at a time, ranked by the sorted column. 2 open requests carry no location — the city marks some records private, and we withhold location on those. "Past 1 yr" is the share of tickets filed since 2022, now at least a year old, that are still open; areas with fewer than 25 such tickets show —.
See the geography note for how 311 volume maps citywide.
How old the open queue is
Open requests by the year they were submitted. The oldest open request was submitted July 23, 2018.
- 20181
- 20192
- 20201
- 20218
- 20255
- 202696
12 open requests were submitted before 2022. Open counts include every request the city’s system still marks open, regardless of age — this reconciles with the city’s own dashboard; see methodology.
The requests themselves
The 10 oldest open pothole requests. Each links to our record page, which links to the request on the city’s RVA311 portal.
| Submitted | Type | Location | Neighborhood | District |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| July 23, 2018 | Pothole Repair | 2825 E Main St 23223 | Shockoe Bottom | 7 |
| March 4, 2019 | Pothole Repair | 603 W Main St 23220 | VCU | 2 |
| March 4, 2019 | Pothole Repair | 601 W Cary St 23220 | Monroe Ward | 5 |
| September 9, 2020 | Pothole Repair | 5528 Hull Street Road, 23224 | Swanson | 9 |
| March 26, 2021 | Pothole Repair | 3200 Williamsburg Ave, 23223 | Church Hill | 7 |
| March 26, 2021 | Pothole Repair | 6232 Jahnke Road, 23225 | Cedarhurst | 4 |
| March 26, 2021 | Pothole Repair | 1000 Oak St | Chamberlayne Industrial Center | 3 |
| March 26, 2021 | Pothole Repair | W Broad St & Westwood Ave | Sauer's Gardens | 2 |
| March 26, 2021 | Pothole Repair | E Ladies Mile Road & Jeter Ave | Edgewood | 3 |
| May 13, 2021 | Pothole Repair | 620 W Cary St, 23220 | VCU | 5 |
Browse every pothole request, filterable by neighborhood and status
Methodology
- Scope.Requests to Public Works under the city’s “Pothole on Road” service — subtype Pothole Repair, the finest grain the city's 311 taxonomy has. Adjacent request types are separate services and not counted here: Street Pavement Repair, Cobblestone Road Repair, Sinkhole, Roadway Hazard, and the alley repair types. Test records and call-center log entries are excluded everywhere on this page.
- Open counts and ages.No date cutoff — every request the city’s system still marks open counts, so these numbers reconcile with the city’s dashboard.
- Median days to close (headline).Requests submitted since 2022 that have closed. Shown citywide only: a per-area close median mostly reflects when backlog cleanups happened there, and only counts finished work — so areas compare on the cohort rate below instead.
- Total outstanding wait.The sum of every open request’s age at each month boundary, in years (“ticket-years”). A backlog of 100 requests each two years old is 200 ticket-years. Rises when the backlog grows or ages; falls when long-waiting requests close.
- Share still open past one year.Of tickets filed since 2022 that are at least a year old, the share still open. Counts open and closed tickets together, so neither cleanup timing nor unfinished work distorts the comparison. Areas with fewer than 25 qualifying tickets show no rate.
- Monthly close and on-time panels.Grouped by the month a request closed, including requests submitted before 2022. The current month is omitted until it’s complete.
- The city’s deadline.Per RVA311, each request’s due date is a department-level performance target set at filing — a workload-management figure that may be refined over time, not a per-request deadline published to or promised to the resident. The current target for these requests is 14 days, in effect since December 2022 (verified against the city’s data, August 2026). Requests filed March 2021 through November 2022 carried a 43-day target and are judged against the deadline in effect when they were filed; requests filed before March 2021 carry no due date in the city’s system, so they’re excluded from on-time rates. We publish on-time rates in aggregate only and don’t label individual requests as late, per the public exposure contract.
Full definitions: RVA311 methodology. Reference tables for all road and sidewalk request types: Roads & Sidewalks breakdown.
These citywide numbers are made of individual requests in specific neighborhoods.
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