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Olde Kensington Residents Find Creative Way To Get City's Attention To Fix Potholes

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Potholes are everywhere. If you live in or drive around Philadelphia, you know them well.

But in one neighborhood, residents got creative to get the city's attention.

What's so complicated about potholes is that not everything that looks like a pothole is one.

There are sinkholes, cave-ins and utility ditches. There are different repair procedures for those different names and one desperate city resident went ahead and added two more names to the list.

If one were to plan a tour of the cavernous streets of Philadelphia, suggested stops might include the scene Carlton Williams Gorge and perhaps the Darrell Clarke Canyon East or West.

darrell clarke pothole
Credit: CBS3

They're not so much natural wonders -- they're potholes and sinkholes in Philadelphia's Olde Kensington neighborhood that someone tagged with spray paint, naming them after Philadelphia's City Council president and the commissioner of the Streets Department.

"I think it's great. It shows some awareness. Obviously, it brought some attention," Kensington resident Eric Yee said.

Like the rest of his neighbors, Yee has been struggling to navigate the gaping pavement on his block for a few months.

"Please tell me the guys are fixing that," one driver asked CBS3 cameras on scene.

Two of the three locations CBS3 went to were paved over. Some neighbors think it was due to the high-profile names the holes were given.

"If that's what needs to be done then, yeah, sometimes you have to do that," Yee said.

CBS3 reached out to the mayor's office and was told: "Tagging names will not get a quicker response. While we appreciate residents using an imaginative way to get our attention, the best way would be to just report it to 311."

According to the city's Streets Department, so far this year, they have filled 14,442 potholes.

They say the average response time is three days for a pothole and 45 days for a sinkhole.

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