After heavy rainfall last April, James and Toni Magee were biking along Boston Street in Dorchester when they noticed a large pothole at the bridge joint over I-93. It was so large that they stopped, took pictures of it, and submitted a 311 request for the city to repair it.

311 is Boston’s phone number for constituents to report non-emergency issues, such as picking up dead animals, trimming trees, or repairing streetlights.

About 36 hours after James Magee submitted the request, the pothole was filled in by Boston Public Works employees. Over the past year, the Magees, who volunteer for Dorchester Bike Kitchen, estimate that they have reported about a dozen issues.

“Oh, wow, I didn’t even see this later, but they actually responded with pictures of the crew,” Magee said with a small laugh, as he reviewed the request on his app in a recent interview. The four photos included showed workers actively fixing the pothole and then highlighted the final product.

Between Jan. 1 and Oct. 4, 2024, 32,177 requests were submitted in Dorchester, accounting for 14 percent of all reported issues across Boston, which is the largest share among any neighborhood in the city.

The most common request by far is for parking enforcement, which represents 16 percent of all issues. If submitted through the app, the requests usually include photos of the vehicles allegedly parked illegally and ask for a parking violation to be issued. The other two most common requests are for street cleaning (9 percent) and to schedule a bulk item pickup (8 percent).

The number of total 311 submissions has steadily risen throughout the past decade. Dorchester residents submitted 11,592 tickets in the first six months of 2014 and 19,949 tickets in the same time period in 2024, a 53 percent increase.

The city updates daily a publicly available record of all requests submitted since 2011; it also maintains a live feed of all 2.6 million open and closed tickets.

On time completion
For most requests, the city has an SLA or a target date and time by which it plans to resolve the issue. If the ticket is closed after the deadline, then it is marked as overdue. The time allocated to address each ticket varies by issue type. For instance, the average deadline to repair potholes is about 1.5 days while the average deadline to repair a traffic sign is about 15 days.

According to Irgisola Budo, the director of 311, departments where tickets are assigned both determine the SLA and are responsible for closing the case. For instance, all cases about street cleaning are handled by the Public Works Department while cases about traffic signals are handled by the Boston Transportation Department.

Two important factors that departments use to establish the SLAs are urgency and internal capacity, according to Budo.
“It kind of just depends on how urgent that situation is and how quickly we need to get it done,” she explained. “On the other side, too, of course, is internally operationally. How much staff that department has, what is the capability of those staff to actually go to each one of these cases and see what’s going on.”

Across the city, 78 percent of tickets were closed on time between Jan. 1 and Oct. 4. The rate in Dorchester is slightly above the city average, as 81 percent of cases are closed on time. The two neighborhoods with the highest rates were Mattapan and Beacon Hill with 88 percent and 86 percent, respectively. The lowest was Charlestown where only 67 percent of tickets are completed on time.

Top cases like requesting street cleaning and improper storage of trash barrels are closed on time 94 percent and 99 percent, respectively.
While some issues like needle pickup do not have an SLA, according to the 2024 311 data, they are nevertheless resolved quickly. The average request for needle pickup was closed about 4 hours after it was submitted in 2024.

Colleen Hansen, a Dorchester resident for a little over a year, said she called 311 “a couple of times” about needles that needed to be cleaned up, as she walked her dog in the neighborhood. “The city responded pretty quickly every time,” she said.

On the other hand, although parking enforcement is the most common request, only half were resolved on time in 2024 as of Oct. 4.
One reason for the metric being so low is because of internal capacity. “They need a lot more enforcers,” Budo explained. “Right now, the Boston Transportation Department is actually doing a lot of hiring days” to address situations.

The director is confident that the increase in enforcers will improve the on time competition rate. “We’ve already seen an increase in that in the past few months, as they’re increasing their staffing,” she said.

Requests unresolved
A number of residents that the Dorchester Reporter interviewed also expressed frustration that their 311 requests were closed yet the issues that they requested about were not fully addressed.

“I had one instance where I submitted [a ticket]. Maybe an hour or two later, I got a note saying like ‘Oh no, we investigated. It’s clear,’” said James Magee. “And I walked to the end of the street and took a picture of the car that was still parked there and sent it back in an email like, ‘I know it’s not clear.’”

Budo suggests that residents to do what Magee did if they feel their case wasn’t fully addressed. “The best way to go about that was to respond to the case closure email and explain, ‘Hey, this actually wasn’t taking care of. Here’s what we’re seeing’ and provide a little more information as what’s going on. And then we can resend that to the department and flag for higher-ups too.”

Another option that Budo laid out, is for people is to contact their Neighborhood Liaisons in the Office of Neighborhood Services, which assists residents with city services and requests. Dorchester’s Liaisons are Madison Foley and Anthony Nguyen.