Want That Pothole Fixed? Tell the City of Lawton About It

Occasionally I'll be on my morning commute into work and start to wonder "How long have I been avoiding that pothole?" That train of thought usually rolls down the track to become "I wonder how long (local politician) has been driving by this pothole?"

Beyond potholes, road issues have been a sore subject in Lawton for a long time, but at least you can be part of the solution relatively easily these days.

The City of Lawton has a little-known program called the Lawton iHelp Portal. Through the portal, you can pinpoint the potholes you see on your commute and report them straight to the Lawton Street Division.

Their goal is or used to be to fix reported potholes within 72 hours, but that hasn't been my experience. That's not to highlight a failure either, if anything it should indicate just how bad the roads are.

Here's how it works.

Over on the City of Lawton Street Division webpage, there's a link at the bottom of the page that will take you straight to the iHelp Portal.

Clicking that link will open the iHelp Portal to another page that starts the short and convenient reporting process... but I'd imagine most people ditch it at this point thinking it requires signing up for yet another something or other... but you don't have to, there's a guest option.

Directly inside, you'll see this interactive map of road issues. Some are marked as completed, others are in the process of fixing, and the rest are those that have been reported already.

How to report your issue.

You'll choose in the menu what kind of road issue you'd like to report, for instance, a pothole.

Then you'll zoom in on the map to the place where your pothole is and click it. You can list additional information about it, and you'll want to be specific. What lane, which direction, etc...

You can also opt to leave your contact information in case the city can't readily locate your pothole.

Lawton politicians are always talking about how they want to improve the roads even though road money always finds a way into other projects. At least you can have a line of communication directly to Lawton Streets Division.

To get started, click here to access the portal.