Minneapolis sets record for potholes following snowy 2023

It took a minute for an asphalt truck to unclog itself before Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey grabbed a shovel and filled a pothole downtown on Thursday, commemorating a record year for potholes in Minneapolis — and the effort to fix them.

"This is how the sausage is made, everybody," Frey said as he watched the recycled asphalt mixture drop out of the vehicle. "This is how the potholes get filled."

Minneapolis had a historically bad year for potholes in 2023 amid an unusually wet and snowy winter, with more reported than any other year on record, according to a new city report. In total there were nearly 9,400 calls to the city's 311 line regarding potholes.

That's more than the previous three years' pothole complaints combined, and up from roughly 2,900 in 2022. The city said it has filled in 100% of potholes reported since at least 2017.

A city spokesperson said the data on potholes does not cover the entire history of Minneapolis, but she noted that 2023 is believed to have had the most in one season.

The main factor was the icy weather: The Twin Cities had the third-snowiest winter on record from 2022 to 2023. That extra snow melt ravaged city roads, seeping through cracks in the asphalt before refreezing and expanding, causing the pavement to swell up before vehicles drove over the swells and broke them open.

The city had eight pothole crews out applying hot asphalt at the peak of repair season, laying down between 50 and 100 tons of asphalt a day, said Brette Hjelle, interim director of Public Works.

Frey noted he allocated $470,000 in the city's 2024 budget for new equipment that will make the temporary cold-weather fixes for potholes last longer. He spent much of the press event Thursday applauding the work of the city staff.

"This took a whole lot of work from a whole lot of people, and obviously when you have more snowfall it's really difficult on our streets throughout the city," Frey said.

The city's report included pothole data from 2017 to 2023. It showed that pothole reports previously spiked in 2018 and 2019. In those years, there were roughly 5,000 and 5,300 reports, respectively, of potholes in the city.

Minneapolis car-repair shop owners said last winter was the worst for potholes and frustrating, too, for the length of time it took for the city to patch the holes.

"We were seeing the potholes everywhere, and everyone had to keep avoiding them because the city wasn't patching them fast enough," said Stanley Pryor, owner of the Autopia repair shop in south Minneapolis. "We were getting customers trying to get paid by the city, because it was causing a lot of damage to their vehicles."

It took 19.4 days on average to fill a pothole in 2023, compared with 7.7 days in 2022 and 5.4 in 2021. The city's report showed that the average time it takes to fill a pothole increased in years with a larger number of them.

One difficulty is the city often cannot fix potholes more permanently until the weather warms enough each spring to fill them in with a hot asphalt mix. Until then, cities are limited to using a temporary "cold mix" of asphalt that lasts only a few weeks.

Frey directed the city's Public Works team in May to use additional overtime and weekend hours "to make sure we are filling as many of the potholes as we can while we wait for a permanent fix."

The city was ranked as having some of the worst potholes in the country in studies this past year. The insurance comparison website QuoteWizard analyzed search statistics related to potholes and determined that Minneapolis ranked second in searches for pothole remedies and complaints related to potholes in 2023.

In first place? Los Angeles, where excessive rain last year soaked into cracks and weakened the roads, before the city's notorious traffic caused further damage.

Minnesota ranked first among states for pothole searches online. USA Today conducted a similar study on search results and ranked Minneapolis as the third-worst city in terms of potholes in 2023, behind New York and Los Angeles.

Pryor and Bill Miller, owner of Bill the Tire Guy in north Minneapolis, both said they sustained significant vehicle damage because of potholes. Pryor said he crashed into a car ahead of him that abruptly stopped because it hit a large pothole. Miller, meanwhile, said his car was totaled after it hit a pothole.

"It knocked the front end out of line, and I had to junk it," Miller said.