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Fri. June 16, 2006, 12:58pm PDT
Got some dirt? Fill a pothole!
Living in the urban setting of Tacoma grants many residents access to an alley behind their house. Often, however, these passages can resemble a region shelled by bombs in wartime. The alley behind our house is fortunately paved but becomes gravel/dirt a house down from ours. I often use the alley to skirt straight over to 30th to head straight downtown to work but it can be a bumpy ride!
Potholes can be rough on the ol' suspension and, although they actually may slow vehicles down like little inverted speed bumps, they look like hell. The trend in our alley seems to be to fill these holes with leftover dirt from backyard projects. It works impressively well since about 4 of 10 or so of the potholes have been filled and already make for a smoother ride. I've got a small pile of dirt just sitting around and might use it on a couple potholes further down the alley.
Has anyone else taken to using this method? Seems like a great way to give a little love to our oft-neglected back alleys.
Comments (12) | To Top
6/16/2006 @ 1:26pm
FYI:
If your garbage is picked up in your alley the city will take care of your potholes. If your garbage is picked up on the street you are out of luck.
by Jake
6/16/2006 @ 1:30pm
Our garbage is picked up back there but I wonder what the turnaround time for a pothole filling request would be. I figure dirt would do the trick in the interim. Thanks for the tip!
The number for potholes/street repair in Tacoma is 591-5495.
by KevinFreitas
6/16/2006 @ 5:35pm
What happens when it rains?
by Erik
6/16/2006 @ 9:44pm
So far so good. It's packed down enough that the dirt isn't puddling or running off. Even if it did, like I said, it's temporary and better than nothing. I may, however, have to give the city a call to test out their responsiveness -- maybe we can even setup a pool to guess how long they may take!
by KevinFreitas
6/16/2006 @ 10:29pm
Took less than a week from the time i sent the complaint. Used tacomaservices.org... I just added in the complaint that i could barely get through the alley and I thought it was going to ruin my wheels.. From what I hear on King5 News the city doesn't like to pay for bent wheels.
by Jake
6/17/2006 @ 2:51am
This is the first I've heard about there being a difference between alleys used for garbage cans and alleys not used for garbage pickup. However, my experience has been that the city prefers that you call them and let them know about alleys that need to be graded. The longer the alley sits there with holes getting worse the more work the city has to do to fix it back up.
The alley behind my parents' house gets bad real quickly after being graded. The last time a city worker was there with a grader he made sure to let us know that we really needed to be calling the city and requesting a grader sooner than every few years :)
by Joel
6/17/2006 @ 7:41am
Our alley isn't nearly as shabby as it could be. It's paved near our house and out to the street and the middle portion is really old pavement and/or gravel. There are some sizable potholes but, fortunately, not too many in total. I suppose they could cause problems especially if a garbage truck ruins a wheel.
What would be awesome is if they city could partner with garbage haulers to have them report bad alleys themselves since they traverse them so regularly.
by KevinFreitas
6/17/2006 @ 6:30pm
Potholes ain't the problem in my neck of the woods. Our alley (of the garbage pick-up variety) is at a higher elevation than the street and is composed completely of gravel. When the garbage truck enters to start its run it spins its tires to get up the incline and we end up with a mass movement of gravel which covers the sidewalk quickly. I occasionally try to shovel things back in order but it is like sweeping back the ocean. I guess it would be pointless to request basic infrastructure like curbing and paved alleys in our neighborhoods when Pacific Ave. is sinking and funding is short.
by Mike H
11/13/2006 @ 11:27am
I live in the Key Peninsula area and our road to get to the house is made private. Therefore the road is our (mine and my neighbors) job to maintain this road. Any good suggestions for putting gravel /dirt down to make the potholes not return so quickly? Is there a magic thing I can do! My minivan will thank you!
by Jen
3/7/2008 @ 7:43pm
Who do you call to have your damaged alley grated when the potholes get bad?
by Sandy
3/10/2008 @ 2:40pm
Hello all,
Please visit www.cityoftacoma.org and in the upper-right-hand corner you'll see a link that reads Frequently Called, containing the phone numbers the public uses the most to connect with City services.
On that site you'll see that the number for potholes/street repairs is 591-5495.
Roxanne
by Roxanne Murphy
3/11/2008 @ 6:40am
Thanks for chiming in Roxanne. That's helpful info indeed!
by KevinFreitas