Man Got 311 Confirmation That West Loop Sinkhole Was Fixed -- But It Wasn't
CHICAGO (CBS) -- The CBS 2 Morning Insiders are taking on a pesky sinkhole – an inconvenience to West Loop drivers that the city hasn't fixed despite one man's request.
We discovered the city is saying the problem is fixed, when it's not. CBS 2's Tim McNicholas asked how that could be.
"I drive across this every day," said Andy Pierce. "Every day."
"This" is the intersection of Desplaines and Madison streets, with which you could say Andy Pierce has a rocky relationship.
He admits the depression in the road is not the worst problem in the world, but it causes people to slow down in the middle of traffic – and worse.
"People who know it's there swerve around it into the other lane of traffic, and if they don't know it's there, then it kind of surprises them and then they stop suddenly," Pierce said.
Pierce said he first called it into the city months ago. But the crater never got fixed.
"This is a busy spot in the West Loop, and right here, you've got a bike lane, you've got parking, you've got crossing, and you've got two lanes of traffic," he said.
So this month, Pierce tried something different. He reported it on the city's 311 app – the one praised by the city on the 311 website.
The next day he got an email signed by the mayor saying the request was completed. And the app told him, "Pothole patched by Oct. 15 at 9:32 a.m.
But that annoying dip in the road hasn't gone anywhere.
"What you want to happen is for it to be fixed before it collapses further," Pierce said.
So we reached out to the city to ask why the problem has not been fixed when they said it was. A city representative finally told us, "I think we solved the mystery."
The city said a sewer issue caused the sinkhole and the Department of Water Management has been working on the problem since last month. City workers have also patched several potholes in the area.
The city said, "311c callers frequently call potholes 'sinkholes' and vice versa,' but in this instance there were both potholes and a sinkhole."
Pierce filed it as a pothole pair request, while the city said the depression is a sinkhole. But Pierce said he even included a photo.
"It's just disappointing that it hasn't been fixed yet," he said.
Pierce said he followed up after the request was closed and made another 311 request about the sinkhole. That request remains open.
