BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — Efforts to ensure a long-term fix for potholes in Buffalo are underway through a partnership between the City of Buffalo and Erie County.
The city is partnering with the county to smooth Buffalo's bumpy roads, starting on Bailey Avenue. The repairs are among the first to be fixed by hot patching in the city in 25 years, says Buffalo Mayor Sean Ryan.
"So I ran for Mayor of the City of Buffalo on the basics. And one of the basics was fixing the darn potholes," Ryan said. "So together we're building our own A-Team in the engineering division so we can take this on ourselves."
Erie County provides the equipment and expertise while training city workers in the art of the hotpatch. Crews will be hot patching potholes with the county one to two days per week, according to the city.
Many of you have been complaining about conditions on Bailey Avenue for years, like Robert Di Pasquale, who owns ABC Hardware on Bailey. He spoke to us back in February.
"It's a little like four-wheeling. I have a pickup truck, so you'd think it would handle it pretty well, but it doesn't," Di Pasquale said. "The tracks are coming up through the street from the trolley cars that were put in many many years ago."
The city was previously using a temporary method of fixing potholes known as cold patching, which involves filling the pothole with loose asphalt or grit and hoping for the best. Whereas hot patching uses heated asphalt, which helps it to bind to the road surface.
Not only is hot patching a more durable fix, but it is also cheaper. Erie County Commissioner of Public Works William Geary said hotpatch material costs $60 to $70 per ton compared to cold patch material at $125 a ton. The mayor argues the city painted itself into a cold-patching corner for more than two decades through a lack of investment.
WATCH: Buffalo partners with Erie County to fix city potholes with hotpatching
"It's a real prime example of the city not investing itself. Because we didn't buy [hotpatching] equipment, we were then stuck with paying more for [coldpatching] materials for a generation. So we paid more for a product that didn't work as well," Ryan said.
Deputy Mayor Benjamin Swanekamp told me the mayor's proposed budget aims to change that by setting aside cash for the city to purchase its own hot patching equipment.
"This is not very expensive stuff," Swanekamp said. "So we put cash directly in the 2026-2027 proposed budget in the engineering department to have the money available July 1 to get going."
Pothole issues have topped the list of 311 calls made to the city's 311 Call and Resolution Center over the last two months, according to city data. The Ryan administration encourages residents to keep reporting potholes to 311. Moving forward, service requests will only be closed once a pothole has been filled, "ensuring greater accountability and more accurate reporting for residents."
The hot patching efforts will happen in conjunction with digital mapping of the city's streets through a partnership with CYVL. The city will collect detailed data on street conditions to inform future paving plans.
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