'Pothole Vigilantes' come out at night to fix Oakland streets

> It’s also surprising to me as I assumed that it was expensive to repair potholes and require special equipment and machines. This makes me think that any unpatched potholes are just a logistic issue since the cost is all labor and coordination.

Cold patch is a temporary fix—it doesn't bond to the surrounding asphalt of the pothole. I don't know much about Portland's climate, and maybe cold patch will work well there long-term, but in areas with harsh winters, any cold patch in potholes will get ripped right out by vehicle tires since the cold will make it more brittle.

Permanent repairs usually do require machinery, as far as I understand.

Cold mix, also known as “blacktop repair”, will repair potholes. I’ve worked with it before, I recall the packaging claims it will last 5-10 years. This is slightly misleading: if you cut the pothole edges square, make sure the base of the hole stays dry, tamp it well, don’t turn a car wheel on it or brake on it for two weeks, and it’s a driveway that gets maybe half a dozen uses a day, it will last 5-10 years.

From the pictures in the article, it looks like these vigilantes were not cutting the potholes. For keeping it dry you’re at the mercy of the weather. Tamping, let’s generously assume they used a pole tamper, which still does a mediocre job compared to actual machinery. These are public roads where you can’t control who uses them and how, so people will be braking and turning on the repair within a few hours. And again, public roads, these will see hundreds or thousands of uses daily. Given all these conditions, I’ll make an educated guess that the repair will last maybe two months, certainly less than a year. There’s a road near my workplace that two large businesses share, it’s at the bottom of two hills so it gets a lot of water running through, it’s an exit off a ~50mph road so it sees both heavy turning and heavy braking, and it supports approximately 1500 trips per day. Potholes there got really bad, repairs were made with cold mix because the local council was lazy and wanted to shut up complaints. They cut the holes and tamped with a tamping machine (looks like a beefy lawnmower, sounds like a dying motorbike). The repairs lasted less than two weeks.

(Eventually the council relented and did a hot mix repair - essentially cut out and dig up a dozen yard long section of the road and re-lay hot asphalt, as if building a new road - the road was closed for a few days, but that repair is going on a year now and is in better condition than the surrounding road. This repair required a back hoe, an asphalt truck [basically a concrete mixer truck with heating], and a steamroller.)