LOS ANGELES — Anyone who drives in Los Angeles has experienced them: pavement cracks so large they could wrench the steering wheel from your hands, and potholes so vast they may in fact lead to China.

But there is good news so far this year: Pothole service requests are down 25%, according to the Los Angeles Bureau of Street Services. Through the first nine months of the current fiscal year, residents reported 14,000 potholes, compared with 18,400 for the prior period.

Part of the decrease is because of drought. With potholes unfortunately resulting from sunlight generating cracks in the pavement that worsen when water seeps in, there just wasn’t as much water to do damage this year. Pothole season typically overlaps with LA’s rainy season, from December through March, but this year’s rainy season was mostly dry.

“Also, it seems that COVID has reduced the number of service requests,” said Greg Spotts, the bureau’s assistant director. “For whatever reason, people have other things on their mind.”

That’s had a secondary positive effect, reducing the time it takes the city to respond to the pothole service requests it receives through the city’s MyLA311 system. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, it took the bureau two to three days to fill a pothole after a resident had requested it. It’s currently taking a day and a half. 

Spotts added that the reason for the quick turnaround is digital technology. In 2015, the city equipped its pothole inspectors with tablets that allow them to inspect requests the same day they come in.