My model of municipal maintenance is that a city's road maintenance workers have a long list of known potholes to fix which is triaged with some formula and dealt with day-by-day. Spraypainting the pothole distorts the triage process and makes a pothole jump the queue, putting it ahead of more severe or older issues than it otherwise would have been. It might not be zero sum, if it causes the agency to act with more…
I don’t imagine all government work has been perfectly prioritized on a well calibrated sliding scale.
My model of municipal maintenance is that a city's road maintenance workers have a long list of known potholes to fix which is triaged with some formula and dealt with day-by-day. Spraypainting the pothole distorts the triage process and makes a pothole jump the queue, putting it ahead of more severe or older issues than it otherwise would have been. It might not be zero sum, if it causes the agency to act with more…
Citizens should have a say in how municipalities order work. If they're not given that say through less-disruptive means, then they can choose to harmlessly tag places where maintenance is failing.
Why are we excusing civic inaction because it might cause an unexpected schedule change for road crews? Why am I supposed to be so full of concern for the ease of their schedule that I'm ok with broken streets?
My model of municipal maintenance is that a city's road maintenance workers have a long list of known potholes to fix which is triaged with some formula and dealt with day-by-day. Spraypainting the pothole distorts the triage process and makes a pothole jump the queue, putting it ahead of more severe or older issues than it otherwise would have been. It might not be zero sum, if it causes the agency to act with more…
Although if a big pothole remains for several years amid many complaints, it's reasonable to think there's no such list. Or there is a list, but it's so long that it might as well not exist.
My model of municipal maintenance is that a city's road maintenance workers have a long list of known potholes to fix which is triaged with some formula and dealt with day-by-day. Spraypainting the pothole distorts the triage process and makes a pothole jump the queue, putting it ahead of more severe or older issues than it otherwise would have been. It might not be zero sum, if it causes the agency to act with more…
> Most road maintenance crews probably aren't sitting around
Assuming that's true, the most likely explanation is that they are working on Big Projects. Pothole maintenance is (probably) behind these projects, even though it can be done without affecting their timeline.
My model of municipal maintenance is that a city's road maintenance workers have a long list of known potholes to fix which is triaged with some formula and dealt with day-by-day. Spraypainting the pothole distorts the triage process and makes a pothole jump the queue, putting it ahead of more severe or older issues than it otherwise would have been. It might not be zero sum, if it causes the agency to act with more…
I look around and see work that needs doing all the time. Potholes, park maintenance, housing shortages, pollution. As long as we're have unsatisfied needs, there's work to be done. I also see unemployment. What kind of system has work to be done but not enough jobs... it's a world where work is not focused on satisfying our needs but rather focused on maximizing profit. As long as we're choosing to make work about m…
Or we’ve invested far too much money in building a road network and the economic value from it either isn’t captured to sustain it OR it’s insufficient to cover costs and it’s being subsidized. Potholes being a “need” to be fixed is an interesting take when we had cobble streets and people survived fine. Pretending like capitalism is the thing that creates economic tradeoffs is incorrect and it’s just scapegoating capitalism - of course every economic system will have problems, but potholes are not uniquely a capitalism problem but more a problem of maintenance after huge capital investments for building infrastructure - maintenance is always harder and a debt that previous generations saddled us by building said infrastructure and that’s true whatever economic model you follow. China will have a similar problem in ~100-200 years as the cost to maintain all the roads, power plants, and buildings start to become a reality.
My model of municipal maintenance is that a city's road maintenance workers have a long list of known potholes to fix which is triaged with some formula and dealt with day-by-day. Spraypainting the pothole distorts the triage process and makes a pothole jump the queue, putting it ahead of more severe or older issues than it otherwise would have been. It might not be zero sum, if it causes the agency to act with more…
If we're making stuff up with no basis, I'll go with it distorts the process by bringing attention to and prioritising the potholes that bother people enough to make the effort of painting them. But really I think most municipalities are not as good at planning as you give them credit for.
Thankfully the case was taken to the Hamilton County Municipal Court, which I imagine was a much fairer trail than he would've received at Lockland's Mayor Court. He was cleared of all charges[0]. [0] https://local12.com/news/local/man-cleared-charges-spray-pai...
I don't know if it will help fixing it, but it might help drivers avoid them more easily if they're painted in bright colors, which still sounds like a plus. Nobody wants to drive into a massive pothole at full speed unaware or try to dangerously dodge at the last moment.