Which cities have the most pothole complaints?

From The ClunkerJunker, October 20, 2021

It’s a war of attrition. Every time your car survives a run-in with a pothole, it takes a little more damage.

You might not notice at first. Your tires weaken with every thud. Your suspension arms and levers twist and bend. The rubber wears off, and you don’t even notice the sound getting clunkier and clunkier.

But sometimes it’s quicker. The asphalt rips through your tire or smashes your wheel out of shape. Even if you get it back on the road, it’s not the same as before.

It’s not your fault (although we’ll go into some ways you can minimize damage). Potholes happen when the asphalt cracks under the pressure of temperature changes, usually in winter and spring. Poor road workmanship doesn’t help. And worst of all are the authorities who leave potholes lying there, sprung like traps.

The best thing to do if you spot a pothole is to report it to your local city, county, or Department of Transportation. A quick web search shows you how. But of course, when people get angry these days, they usually report it to 330 million other users on Twitter. The Clunker Junker deduced that Twitter data is probably the best way to gauge which cities, US states, and English counties have the biggest problem. So we grabbed the data and made some maps and charts.

Key Findings

Rhode Island is the American state with the most pothole tweets per 1,000km of road: 23.4.
Atlanta, Georgia, is the US city with the most complaints, 529.1 per 1,000km.
Greater London is the English county with the most pothole-themed tweets, 176.7 per 1,000km.
Edinburgh is the UK city with the most pothole complaints on Twitter, 570.3 per 1,000km.

Rhode Island is America’s ‘Pothole State’

First, we figured out the number of pothole-themed tweets from every area in the US over the course of a year. Then we figured the total road length of every city and state. And then we crushed these figures together to get the number of Twitter pothole complaints per 1,000km of road in each area.

“We used to call it ‘The Pothole State,’” tweets Rhode Islander Melanie Joy. Rhode Island is pothole state #1 by some leap, with 23.4 pothole tweets per 1,000km of road – beating out second-placed Hawaii (20.6). “R

“Riding a motorcycle in Hawaii is a mixture of absorbing breathtaking views and then nearly dying by driving into a pothole big enough to be a bomb crater,” tweets Joe Kassabian.

Idaho is the smooth drivin’ state, with local news and government sharing satisfying videos of potholes being filled. The tweet count for Idaho + potholes is significantly raised by drivers nowhere near Idaho using the phrase “Idaho-sized pothole” to describe far-flung road hazards.

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