The days are shorter and temperatures are dropping, which means pothole season is on the way. But Philadelphia is rolling out its repair squad before they arrive.
The city has launched a pothole repair initiative, called the Road Warriors Pothole Squad. These 22 workers spread across six teams will address potholes, including those flagged by residents, with a goal of fixing them within two days, the city announced last week.
The initiative is part of the broader Citywide Cleaning Program, which began its fall campaign Friday. Residents can submit pothole repair requests to roadwarriorspotholesquad.org, which will publicly track requests, whether the repairs have been completed, and their locations on a map.
“The Road Warriors Pothole Squad will be the frontline defense for our city’s streets by proactively tackling, targeting, and repairing potholes quickly to keep drivers safe and traffic moving,” the city said in a statement.
The squad will only be addressing potholes, not other street defects like cave-ins, cracks, or asphalt issues that could require more time and coordination with other agencies, the city said.
The Road Warriors Pothole Squad will work Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Resident submissions coming in after 4 p.m. will be processed the following day.
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker proposed a $7.1 million pothole squad in her budget address before Philadelphia City Council in March. While announcing her plans to have a dedicated crew in each of the city’s six highway districts for pothole repairs, Parker said potholes were an important safety and quality-of-life issue for Philadelphians. The city repaired over 60,000 of them last year, she said, but it wasn’t enough.
“Until you’ve had to go and get your shocks or your car serviced because you hit a pothole, you don’t know how serious an issue this is in the city of Philadelphia,” she said in her budget address
It’s unclear what the approved budget of the Road Warriors is, or how it will be funded. Parker originally proposed funding the pothole squad with a new 25-cent tax on the delivery services for certain goods.
The city has not had a speedy record for its pothole response. An Inquirer analysis of about 6,000 pothole reports through 311 from May 2024 to May 2025 found it took the city 15 days on average to mark the complaint as “closed.”
In some poorer areas of the city, closed designations took even longer. In Olney, it took the city 36 days, and in Frankford, it took 34 days.