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Zohran Mamdani Gets 8,000 Potholes Filled in a Single Day
(novaramedia.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
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I mean, I do legitimately wonder how he did this when other administrations didn't or couldn't. Would like an insider perspective. Like, did he just pay tons and tons of OT? Did he order the potholes filled quickly, even if they didn't meet the normal standard for quality? Did he crack the whip and say "fuck your union rules!" Or were past administrations just this corrupt/lazy/incompetent?
I'm sure his fanboys will say "obviously it's the last one - he's not a corrupt capitalist pig", or something. And I'm open to that explaination. But I'd like, yaknow, some actual statements from people who were actually involved.
"But how is that even possible?"
I mean, my question was how it managed to do its job better than previous administrations.
Analysis elsewhere in the thread appears to indicate that none of my hypotheses were actually the most likely scenario. Instead, (and I'm embarassed I didn't think of this) the most obvious hypothesis is that the DOT is filling potholes at a completely normal rate, and there are just a lot of potholes available to fill. They are comparing filling potholes on the pothole-filling-est day of the year after a harsh winter, versus an average week after average winters in previous administrations.
So, as always, the null hypothesis when a politician says something should be "it's spin"
It's possible they're all fresh new potholes. The reason there's more of them is the trend from cars to SUVs.
The first part makes sense. But I think an especially harsh winter would be more the culprit than SUVs. Not that they don't cause more damage - but the number of SUVs in a city doesnt double in a single year and cause a noticeable increase in potholes. We would expect a gradual increase in pothole development that would only be noticeable with statistical analysis over several uyears.
You're totally right. I didn't know it was such a big jump. I assumed this was one of those cases where every administration gets to claim something is the "biggest ever" because the thing they're bragging about tends to grow steadily with population and/or inflation.
I mean, totally possible. But it looks like he just got a lucky break with the weather this year, lol
EDIT 2: See Aatube's comment below for the NYT article link. It's real.
I suspect the article is overselling it (the comparison, not the raw pothole number), and they don't source basically anything they're saying, so it's hard to definitively call them on that. NYC had a winter that created an abnormal number of potholes, and this article (using an uncited figure) says: "the same number that would usually take New York’s Department of Transport (DOT) a week." But is that for filling potholes directly after winter? Is it for the rate of potholes per week averaged across the year (which would be a completely invalid comparison)? I guess I could try digging it up, but Novara Media clearly didn't give enough of a shit when they said it.
I think it's cool regardless.
Dunno, Novara; maybe when you decide to learn how hyperlinks work.
EDIT: I tried to follow one breadcrumb to the NYT using this quote from the article: "According to the New York Times, the incident signaled early on that Mamdani was raring to take on “long ignored street improvements – the kind of meat-and-potatoes issue that some previous mayors have struggled to deliver on”.".
I can't find that quote, even trying several different verbatim excerpts from the quote (but the full quote should be findable anyway). Thaaaaaaaat's really fucking questionable. I could be missing something. @return2ozma@lemmy.world, your thoughts?
Here's the source
https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/03/mamdani-administration-fills-more-than-7-000-potholes-during-wee
Daaaaaamn. That is some actual work being done. And all it took was electing a socialist. Let that be the lesson.
Here's a press release from the piece of shit who was in office previously, Eric Adams, celebrating the 500,000th filled pothole of his tenure. Mamdani assumed office January 1, so at 82 days, he's advertising ~610 potholes fixed per day in a winter that's produced an abnormally high amount of potholes.
Adams' press released was published January 29, 2025, and he assumed office January 1, 2022, or 1124 days. This means Adams was advertising ~445 potholes filled per day, which is 73% the amount Mamdani advertises here. Once you account for the fact that Adams' average was across three years rather than just "from the middle of winter to spring" – meaning that on average there were fewer potholes available to fix per day than Mamdani's timespan – the difference, while not exactly clear, is negligible. Even accounting for the fact that Mamdani just assumed office and may have some inertia, these aren't even close to earth-shaking numbers.
You can also see that this kind of pothole dick-measuring contest is extremely typical for NYC mayors – and god, fuck Eric Adams. If I wouldn't slobber Adams for basically these same numbers, I'm not going to slobber Mamdani either.
Edit: Something else I totally forgot to address is response time; per the Adams press release (I'm taking it uncritically, but I'm also taking the Mamdani PR uncritically; sue me):
Meanwhile, Mamdani's press release states:
And just like before, the difference in the nature of their tenure means I can't in good faith give Adams the point based on the raw number; obviously the average response time across three years with four seasons each could have fewer hurdles on average than "middle of winter to spring", where everything's cold as fuck and frozen and snowing.
I appreciate you sitting through all of this for our benefit :)
I wanna see mamdani be successful but I'm wary of putting politicians up on a pedestal as our saviors and hope, as I'm learning from my elder leftists that thats gone wrong a lot of times before 😅
Still rooting for him though :)
EDIT: See Aatube's comment below for the NYT article link. It's real.
Okay, makes sense; from the press release:
Left with no other data (I'm not thrilled Novara treated this press release totally uncritically), I'm forced to assume they mean "average potholes per week per year", which is a completely bullshit metric to compare against that you'd only use as an empty boast. A day with just under 7x the efficiency of an average day of the year isn't all that exceptional when the day is a spring thaw right after a winter that made an exceptional amount of potholes. Pothole filling is not and will never be even close to evenly distributed.
It's still very good to be taking care of potholes, but Novara seemingly took a standard press release about fixing potholes and turned it into how Mamdani is revolutionizing NYC.
All that aside: what are your thoughts on the article seemingly fabricating a quote from The New York Times?
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/06/nyregion/mamdani-pothole-williamsburg-bridge-bump.html?unlocked_article_code=1.V1A.e_aT.Ra0vREoZDA0U#%3A%7E%3Atext=long-ignored+street+improvements+%E2%80%94+the+kind+of+meat-and-potatoes+issue+that+some+previous+mayors+have+struggled+to+deliver+on
It's right here.
When you're trying to find a quote, try wrapping the literal quoted text in quotation marks and searching to get exact matches: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22long+ignored+street+improvements+%E2%80%93+the+kind+of+meat-and-potatoes+issue+that+some+previous+mayors+have+struggled+to+deliver+on%22
Oh, thanks! I did search it in quotes. It just didn't show up for some reason. I guess Bing just doesn't like this one for some reason (an example substring I chose):
Super my bad. Amended my comments. Very heavily appreciated. I should've tried another search engine to be safe.
I appreciate your thoroughness!
Oh, this is not thorough. But I appreciate your appreciation.
The question is, how many potholes do they usually fill in a day? For all we know they fill 8000 potholes every spring, but just don't advertise it. That being said, letting the people know what you do for them is important.
1/5 that or so, based on the article
He’s got John Henry on the payroll.
He said, asking on Lemmy, where none of those people are likely to exist.
Sure. But a future article or other news source or maybe a former mayor's aide's twitter account might have more info, and maybe someone here knows about that
Im just gonna leave this here