As residents dodge potholes, approved repair budget will fix less than 6 miles of road

It’s a rare moment in New Bedford City Hall when councilors ask the mayor to increase spending. But New Bedford’s roads seem to be worth it.

After a particularly bad winter storm season wreaked havoc on New Bedford’s roads, city councilors approved $3 million for road repairs — an estimate that the Department of Public Infrastructure (DPI) said would fund up to six miles of repair, based on previous years of work.

Councilors, who approved the spending this month, hoped the number would be higher.

“I would give you $10 million if I could,” Councilor Naomi Carney told Jamie Ponte, the commissioner of DPI, during a recent hearing. 

“I think you’re shortchanging yourself with [asking for] $3 million,” said Derek Baptiste, Ward 4 councilor. “I’m tired of getting calls because people have potholes the size of baby baths,” he added. 

“We would love to see more money here,” said Shawn Oliver, Ward 3 councilor. 

New Bedford residents have filed 369 pothole complaints that had yet to be completed as of Tuesday, March 31, either by calling 311 or using the NBConnected app, according to an analysis by The Light. The city estimates it will fill 10,000 potholes this year (a fivefold increase since 2022) with an average completion time of just under two weeks.

With nearly 300 miles of road in New Bedford, the city can only fund a small portion of the paving work it needs. The six miles of road that DPI estimated that the city’s budget would cover is less than a quarter of the driving distance it takes the 11 city councilors to arrive at City Hall.

Additional sources of funding contribute to road repair, including grants, state aid, and federal funding, according to Ponte. And the city is able to keep its pavement in “fair” condition, according to independent ratings from Streetscan, a contractor that evaluates road conditions, Ponte told city councilors. 

A historic winter storm this year made the perennially battered roads even worse. From the peninsula to the working waterfront to the North End, the pothole issue has unified the residents of New Bedford. 

“Horrible pot holes the size bigger than a car tire,” wrote one resident in a 311 report about a pothole on Acushnet Avenue. On Merrimac Street, another reported three potholes of “decent size,” about a foot wide each: “The two closer together might turn into a bigger pothole.” 

But with residents and politicians aligned and energized on the pothole issue, what is the process for actually repairing roads? And what keeps New Bedford from spending more on its roads?

How does New Bedford repair its roads? 

Last year, the City of New Bedford reported paving 3.5 miles of road and “completed pavement preservation on 3.2 miles of roadway” — roughly equivalent to the six miles of road the city budgeted this fiscal year. Pavement preservation, according to city public information officer Jonathan Darling, includes crack repairs and sealing that can otherwise extend a road’s life before it reaches, well, the end of the road.

But how complicated is filling a pothole anyway?

The most important factor is temperature. Asphalt is made from a mix of sand, rocks, and gravel bound together with bitumen, a petroleum byproduct. The material is easy to work with when hot, but can quickly become unusable once it cools down. The process is so temperature-sensitive that asphalt factories shut down in the winter months, leaving cities to use “cold patches” to fill potholes in the meantime. Cold patch asphalt doesn’t need to be heated before use. 

But cold patches are temporary, and potholes need to be properly filled with hot asphalt come summer.

New Bedford has used a “hot box” machine since 2017. The machine, essentially an oven on the back of a truck, allows workers to keep heated asphalt hot for longer, preventing frequent trips back and forth when the asphalt cools down. The city added a second hot box around six years ago, Darling said. A Light analysis found that most reported potholes in the Whaling City get filled within about two weeks. Still, especially when the weather is chilly, it can take months for some potholes to get filled.

In Providence, the city’s Department of Public Works bought its $60,000 hot box to speed up pothole repairs. Last year, the hot box’s first year in use, the city was able to repair over 5,200 potholes, over 1,000 more than the year before. The hot box worked so well that the city is requesting another one for next year, said Patricia Coyne-Fague, the director of the Providence Department of Public Works.

“It increases efficiency; it helps us do a better, more thorough job since our guys aren’t rushing,” Coyne-Fague said.

Still, all the potholes mean good business for Bob Trinidad, the owner of Bob’s Auto Repair on Hazard Street. As of late March, Trinidad said he had serviced about a dozen pothole-related repairs since February, a significant increase from the 20 or 30 repairs he typically receives in a year. 

Depending on the exact issue and the model of the car, these repairs can set back vehicle owners up to $1,000 or more, Trinidad said.

Shortly after February’s blizzard, John Miguel of Johns Auto Service was driving in his truck — a 6-foot-tall Ford F-250 — when he hit a pothole in the North End. The pothole had been filled with water, Miguel explained, so he couldn’t see its true depth.

“It took down my truck and shattered my rim completely,” Miguel said. 

Miguel had to tow his truck from the area and ended up replacing two rims and tires — repairs totaling $2,300, he said. Miguel filed a claim with the city two weeks ago but has yet to hear back. Meanwhile, Miguel said potholes on Hathaway Street and Acushnet will only cause more damage.

As of March 27, Darling said the city has received 40 claims related to pothole damages in 2026.

Both Darling and Coyne-Fague stressed that now is the busiest time of year for potholes, and city workers often have to dodge oncoming traffic to make repairs without closing down an entire street. February’s blizzard also brought the one-two punch of extreme cold and snow, plus heavy trucks and plows, that can make potholes worse, Darling said.

“There are crews out everyday filling potholes around the City,” Darling said in an email.

But in New Bedford’s North End, Miguel is getting impatient.

“They’re not going to do nothing,” Miguel said. “Honest to God, it’ll be like this all summer long. They’re worrying about a bigger lawsuit. They’re not worried about rims and tires.”

Residents have been reporting monster potholes to the city — here are a few of them. ↓

Why New Bedford doesn’t spend more on its potholes and roads

Shortly after city councilors took turns telling DPI Commissioner Jamie Ponte how much they want to spend on roads, the explanation for why they can’t arrived to the podium.  

“We are in the ramp-up stage of the pensions,” said the city’s chief financial officer, Bob Ekstrom. “This is going up immensely.” 

Within the next 10 years, the annual cost of pensions in the City of New Bedford will race toward roughly $75 million — or about 15 times the annual spending on DPI. By law, New Bedford must “catch up” on its unfunded pension obligation by 2035, meaning these costs must significantly increase.

In effect, the large-and-growing pension costs are already driving nearly all of the hard tradeoffs that city officials will have to make. 

Meanwhile, the amount dedicated to road repairs in the annual capital budget has not increased since at least 2023. 

For many New Bedford residents, bumpy roads are just another part of life in the Whaling City. As the pension cost grows, those bumps may get bigger. 

Email Colin Hogan at chogan@newbedfordlight.org and Brooke Kushwaha at bkushwaha@newbedfordlight.org.