Citizens in Saratoga Springs are raising awareness about safe driving in their community with help from SeeClickFix media partner The Saratogian. This past Wednesday the city participated in Operation Safe Stop, a nationwide event held to crack down on drivers who illegally pass school buses. Police officers rode aboard buses and followed routes with a history of illegal passing complaints in marked and unmarked cars. Careless drivers faced penalties that range from fines to jail time. The Saratogian explains the importance of Operation Safe Stop:

“More children are getting hurt getting on and off the bus than riding the bus,” said Cindy Dort, occupant protection educator at Cornell Cooperative Extension and coordinator of this year’s local Operation Safe Stop Day.

This isn't a stupid issue, someone could be hurt or killed. I don't want to watch my son getting on the school bus and getting mowed down by an ignorant and careless driver.

For most, the mere mention of peer pressure can conjure anything from negative feelings to middle school flashbacks. Tina Rosenberg, author of a new book called "Join the Club", is on a mission to give peer pressure a better reputation while promoting social change.

Rosenberg recently spoke with American Public Media's Kai Ryssdal to discuss the inspiration behind her book, and how peer pressure can effectively be used as a tool in promoting social campaigns. Her interview, featured as part of the Marketplace podcast, shed light on the positive power of peer pressure. A mother of three, Rosenberg is keenly aware of the stigma surrounding peer pressure, but she has seen first-hand the good it can do.

...we all know how powerful peer pressure can be, and how afraid grown-ups are of peer pressure applied to our children. But we can use this very powerful tool for good ends as well as for bad ends.

I came to the realization because I was working on a story about a group of students in Serbia, who organized a movement that eventually was key in the overthrow of Slobodan Miloševic, and the techniques they were using were identical to ones that I had seen in a South African government teen AIDS prevention program. I started to think about, what is it that these two effective programs, which are so different in so many ways, have in common? And the answer was: they try and get people to change their behavior, not by giving them new information about how you get AIDS or how bad Miloševic is, and not by appealing to fear, but by giving them a new peer group to identify with, by changing their behavior into a really cool and heroic thing to do.

Chris Moore, CIO of the City of Edmonton in Alberta, Canada, recently gave the SeeClickFix blog some much appreciated love by featuring not one but two of our recent posts on his paper.li The Chris Moore Daily.

Tech-savvy Moore has been named one of Alberta's 50 most influential people by Venture Magazine. As CIO he lends his vision and leadership to the direction of Edmonton's technology. His goal is to transform Edmonton to an open community that allows all citizens to interact with their government, and with each other, by embracing innovation in technology. A great example of Moore's vision in action is The Edmonton Journal's SeeClickFix powered pothole map that allows readers to report and map potholes directly from the newspaper website.

We're looking forward to seeing "Moore" civic leaders like this!

We know, we know. Potholes seem like the only thing we talk about here at SeeClickFix. However, we've never actually discussed the origins of these nuisances. Well, you're in luck! Yesterday, I came across this article from Popular Mechanics that breaks down how these road craters form. The process starts with one small crack, which then fills with water. After the water freezes, the crack expands and the water pushes the asphalt outward and upward.

With 166 days until the primary election, New Haven resident Doug Hausladen recently launched his campaign website for municipal office. And guess what's included as part of his platform? As a proud Ward 7 resident, Doug hopes to improve his community by encouraging his neighbors to report issues via SeeClickFix and even dedicates an entire section of his website to it.

Lately I feel as though potholes have been occupying a significant amount of my time. I'm writing about them on the SeeClickFix blog, reading issues about them from our users around the world, and protecting my Subaru from them on the streets of New Haven. It is that last piece of my recent pothole obsession - my seemingly futile efforts at protecting my used and abused station wagon - that made me carefully read an article we found recently.

Autoblog.com featured a pothole-centric press release issued by Ford in Essex, England that made me envious of Ford owners. The release, a response to Chancellor George Osborne's recent announcement that an additional £100 million will be placed in to the UK's 'pothole fund', outlines the company's rigorous pothole testing techniques. The release explains:

Testing and development processes for chassis and suspension systems carried out by Ford engineers at Dunton Technical Centre - one of Europe's largest automotive R&D centres - and Lommel Proving Ground, Belgium mean that Ford vehicles are designed to cope with the most demanding road surfaces. Tests include running real-world road simulations, high-tech data acquisition and thousands of miles of surface testing.

The Lommel Proving Ground in Belgium goes as far as to include an inch-by-inch recreation of a notoriously porous English road. More abusive road surfaces are simulated at Ford's Dunton Proving Ground in Essex, England. Ford says that between the two test facilities, it tests every wheel and tire combination sold on its entire European vehicle portfolio.

Harvard Crimson columnist Niharika S. Jain featured SeeClickFix in her opinion piece published today titled The Mobile Revolution - We can use cell phones for social change. In explaining how non-profits, businesses and citizens are leveraging this technology to promote social change and development, Jain used our platform as an example of how mobile phones are used to promote better governance through improved communication and delivery of services. She wrote:

...mobile phones can empower citizens to voice their needs and concerns to the government. For instance, SeeClickFix is a platform that allows people to submit information on everyday, non-emergency problems like a traffic light timing problem, road potholes, or blocked bike lanes. Governements can then effectively respond to these issues, as New Haven, Conn. policemen did when they arrested the culprits of petty neighborhood crimes reported through this platform.

While procrastinating on Facebook last night, I received a notification from an unlikely source: Alger Street in Brockton, Massachusetts.

As my newest friend, Alger Street may not seem like the nicest of the bunch:

I am one of the meanest, ugliest roads you've ever seen. I pop tires, dent rims, break shocks, you name it I do it. I have been this way for about 10 years now. Even though people complain about me constantly, NO ONE CAN CHANGE ME. I'M A MONSTER!!!

They took over Egypt with a Facebook page. We figured we could get Alger Street fixed.

Today, Buffalo Green Code announced it would integrate SeeClickFix into its site after noticing countless residents posting community issues via SCF. The mashup combines citizen remarks submitted through its Buffalo Citizen Engagement map and community issues reported on our website:

Although SCF is generally used for 311 type-issues, I saw that many comments were more planning related. In an effort to provide the planners of the Green Code with as much useful information as possible, I combined the Buffalo Citizen Engagement map on the Green Code site with the comments from See Click Fix onto one map. This helps us visualize all types of issues no matter how they were submitted to the web!

(SeeClickFix Co-founders Ben Berkowitz, Kam Lasater, and Jeff Blasius)

When Ben Berkowitz noticed some ugly graffiti staring back at him from a neighbor’s building, he did what many people would do: He got worked up. So he called City Hall — and ended up with even more aggravation. “I am actually a big graffiti art fan, but this was not the kind that belonged on my neighbor’s building,” Berkowitz recalls. He called the city and quickly became disenchanted with his inability to get past telephone gatekeepers to talk to someone who could actually do something. Out of his frustration came a plan to change the way citizens could effect positive change.

“Forty-five percent of the issues on the site are fixed, and that number is quickly climbing as the number of issues goes up,” Berkowitz says. “The more awareness there is of the site, the more people pay attention to it.”

[Robert] Smuts’ staff was faced with prioritizing and triaging a blizzard of e-mails. “As SeeClickFix was growing and finding out what they were all about, I met with Ben and we talked a lot about how it could be more helpful to the city and other municipalities,” says Smuts. “He picked my brain, wanting to know how governments think.” Soon Smuts realized he had found the solution to creating a public interface that worked. From those discussions, SeeClickFix Pro was created and New Haven now integrates the program with its existing City Works work-order program. Using SeeClickFix Pro, when someone posts an alert, it feeds automatically into the city’s Public Works Department.

Berkowitz is also hoping for continued great things: “I would like to see SeeClickFix to be a single platform for the entire world that everyone can trust that they can get results from.”

Humans are competitive by nature, and that doesn't change when potholes are involved. As a SeeClickFix media partner, the News-Herald launched a campaign yesterday to fix Ohio potholes in serious need of repair.

Known as the 'Pothole Patrol,' the newspaper will be collaborating with Adventure Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram to help alleviate the region's pothole mess. They'll be sharing the information reported on the website with those responsible for fixing them.

The best part? Include 'Pothole Patrol' in the issue summary and you could win one of two $20 Speedway gas cards or one of five certificates for a free oil change courtesy of Adventure Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram.

To join the Pothole Patrol, click here.

My hometown of Shelton is known for many things: the Wiffle Ball, canary-fighting rings, and NFL quarterback Dan Orlovsky. Until recently, fixing potholes did not fall into this category.

Using SeeClickFix, I posted two issues involving poor road conditions in early March (see issues #86756 and #86024). While my potholes still remain, another Shelton resident just discovered the pothole she had posted no longer exists!

Reported just six days ago and viewed over 50 times, issue #89364 entitled "Very large pothole" involved a very large pothole on Beardsley Road in Shelton, CT. Who could have guessed? According to the SeeClickFix user, the pothole had appeared a few weeks ago and was very hard to avoid while driving.

Last night, however, Shelton resident Dana happily closed the issue:

I was driving home from work today and was expecting to hit this pothole for the millionth time when I noticed....it is fixed! I am so happy and really impressed that it was fixed so quickly.

Recently, I stumbled across an interesting YouTube video about employing SeeClickFix to the benefit of elders.

A health care consultant (and singer!), AnthonysSong advocates for senior citizens everywhere. When he came across SeeClickFix, he deemed it 'an idea worth emulating' and believed there should be an equivalent in elder care.

He does cite Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities (NORCs) as providing services for aging populations, but he says it's "not the case across the board because obviously there are people who are living alone and not in a community of elders who need help as well but are isolated from other people."

SeeClickFix allows citizens anywhere to report and track issues in their communities via the Internet. By doing so, it encourages citizens to publicly broadcast issues, work collectively to improve their neighborhoods, and become engaged on a greater scale. According to AnthonysSong, SeeClickSix can serve as a model for attending to seniors' needs from grocery shopping to doctor visits:

The whole idea of the community rallying around the needs of the people and issues within that community is a good one and we just need to adapt it for rallying around the causes of our elders and everyone chipping in to make that happen.

Back in February, SeeClickFix's Ben Berkowitz spoke about strengthening 'communities of practice' at the TechSoup Global Contributors' Summit in Santa Clara, CA. Out of approximately 500 attendees, Ben was one of a handful mentioned in this recent blog post from TechSoup Global:

Ben Berkowitz of SeeClickFix definitely has some new dance partners; He'll be talking to IREX about their media training groups, and also their library program in Romania, and with Chris Worman about the TechSoup program there. Meanwhile Bill Strathmann at Network for Good has designs on SCF too... After weakly begging off the a.m of Day 1 (Valentine's Day? Don't make me go all revolutionary guards on you, Billy), Strathmann sprang off of his red eye from DC in a relaxed, collaborative mood. Re SCF he wrote, "Network for Good is increasing its training to nonprofits on tech tools that help engage their communities and drive donations. We're reaching over 150,000 nonprofit professionals today. SeeClickFix is a great community tool that has a latent role for small nonprofits (imagine the Anacostia Watershed Society adopting the region it cares about on SeeClickFix and accessing/engaging citizens who care about the same issues in the same geographic area – trash in the Anacostia River), but SeeClickFix does not have access to small nonprofits (nonprofits don't know it exists or how they could use it)."

By Erin (our awesome intern)

SeeClickFix is helping to improve communities around the world as reports from citizens in Espoo, Southern Finland pour in. Currently, there are around 160 open issues reported there with watch areas set up for the mayor, an Espoo board member, and a local neighborhood group.

With walking and cycling as major modes of transportation, Espoo has a great demand for SeeClickFix; the maintenance of sidewalks and bike paths is critical. For example, one open issue involves an unpaved section of a bike path. Yikes! Espoo is another great place for citizens to use SeeClickFix and work together to improve their community!

With winter coming to an end, potholes of all shapes and sizes continue to negatively impact communities across the globe. Believing roads affect our daily lives, Pothole.Info recently highlighted SeeClickFix's success with pothole abatement, emphasizing how the site simultaneously engages citizens and helps local governments save money.

Citizens are coming, local governments are responding – and the potholes are getting fixed.

Pothole.info attributed part of SeeClickFix's success with the implementation of smartphone apps since citizens, particularly millennials, view them as tools for change and for organizing groups of people.

In other words, if hundreds of people in a medium-size city take camera phone pictures of potholes and then forward them on to the city’s streets maintenance department, more of the most important potholes will be filled and fixed faster. Net result: a whole city will become more drivable.

One month ago, SeeClickFix user Alan McHone reported a broken sidewalk in Charlotte, NC. Viewed over 100 times, the issue deals with a sidewalk damaged in multiple spots. While the user says it's normal for the city, he thinks this sidewalk seems extra dangerous.

It is about 5 feet from the CATS bus stop, and every time the bus runs over it, it actually moves and goes up and down about 2 feet in the air. Imagine that while standing on or near it. Or when it is filled with muddy water, which it often is.

Resolving issues isn't a competition. If it were, however, the Town Green Special Services District of New Haven would totally dominate. Our very own Ben Berkowitz reported two separate issues involving graffiti in the last day. And they've already been cleaned up!

Reported yesterday, issue #89849 involved graffiti on State Street, which the Town Green District painted over within the day. Think that was fast? Well, the organization's Clean Team already dealt with another spot of graffiti (issue #90153) posted just three hours ago!

The Town Green District seeks to make New Haven an "internationally competitive urban environment in which to live, work, learn and play." We think they're doing an exceptional job at keeping our city clean, safe, and fun!

As wintry weather and potholes cause trouble across the country, one city strayed from the trend and dealt with a pricklier issue.

Reported only 15 days ago, issue #86215 "Dead Cactus" was resolved in Albuquerque, NM last Friday. Local resident Joe Barela reported the massive cactus located on the Watercress and Jefferson median and believed the overflowing plant could be dangerous to citizens.

The cactus has large needles and is a hazard to traffic and pedestrians.

It is all gone. It was gone as of Friday afternoon. The area looks so much better. Thanks to everyone.

(Photo courtesy of the Saratogian)

Tons of people drive the road daily to go to the Racino. I hit one at least every time I leave my house (no choice with snow/traffic)! This should definitely be fixed as soon as possible...I'm afraid of getting a flat every time I hit one. They're huge!

It's not even "bad." It's downright awful.

They’re going to continue to work in that area up there.

Back in October, we told you about one Guam resident Don Muna who took matters into his own hands and dealt with graffiti on the Yona Bridge just eleven days after being reported.

After spending some time on the Interwebz, I stumbled upon this awesome YouTube video that documents how he cleaned it up. Citizens everywhere can learn a lot from this SeeClickFix user!

With winter coming to close and rainy season approaching, it's important to check your residential and street storm drains to ensure they're working properly. And if they're not, report them on SeeClickFix!

For instance, in Richmond, VA, one resident noticed that dirt and debris from recent storms had blocked the drain on S.Laurel and China Streets, and alerted the local government.

Know of some more blocked drains? Submit them here!

Eleven months ago, SeeClickFix user "Jen" reported issue #34221 and saw no results. Now, local television station WBTV is investigating the situation.

Having been viewed over 680 times, the issue deals with illegal activity happening on the 4400 block of S.Tryon Street in Charlotte, NC. Resident Jen wrote: "drug, prostitution, loitering, police know this. And music from cars all night [...] there have been t[w]o robberies at gun point this week and the police still do not watch this area." When WBTV spoke with local residents, they discovered that the complaints were "consistent with the issues that have been in that neighborhood."

According to WBTV, the station recently monitored the block for two days. While they did not see any suspicious activity, they said that the proper authorities, the Charlotte Mecklenburg police, have been notified of the complaint and are responding to the resident's request for additional patrols in the area.

With new technology emerging daily, POLITICO recently discussed the power of location-based apps to encourage civic engagement. And guess who got a shout-out? SeeClickFix!

With the recent budget cuts and subsequent layoffs in New Haven, library hours were drastically decreased starting in late February. The main library branch saw a reduction from 185 to 148 hours per month, while the neighborhood branches saw larger reductions from 136 to 96, which includes the elimination of Saturday hours. Now, residents are speaking out against the cuts and taking action via SeeClickFix.

Designated issue #86403, the "Petition to Restore Library Hours in New Haven" has seen a lot of activity since being posted 9 days ago. The issue has been viewed over 1500 times, with 123 users voting to immediately restore the eliminated hours.

According to the SeeClickFix posting, an anonymous user started the petition at the request of an elderly New Haven resident who could no longer access the Internet because of the eliminated weekend library hours. The anonymous SeeClickFix user wrote that local libraries are crucial to "public space and civic vitality in New Haven" and "should be active community hubs where neighbors can meet and cement relationships." The libraries provide many services to all members of the community, from educational resources and public computer access to providing space for residents to gather and cultivate relationships.

One SeeClickFix user, Corlis Carroll, posted that she couldn't believe the city was removing the Saturday hours:

What about the children who like to go to the library on their day off from school?

Guest Post by Alexis Zanghi

A quick glance at New Haven's hottest topics on SeeClickFix reveals that many of our users are
concerned with the walkability of New Haven's streets. From Orange and Bishop (where some worry
about their safety crossing the street), to Woodward Avenue (where there are no sidewalks), the
message is clear: citizens want a pedestrian-friendly city.

According to a recent post on the NRDC's Smarter Cities blog New Haven has the highest percentage of people who walk to work in New England, and the second highest percentage of people who use non motorized transportation. But the walkability of any city matters for many reasons. In 2009, CEOs for Cities released a report entitled “Walking the Walk: How Walkability Raises Housing Values in U.S. Cities.” Among their findings? Property values increased with proximity to shops, restaurants, cafes, schools, libraries, and other amenities.

And in 2010, the University of New Hampshire expanded on this. Walkability doesn't just
increase physical capital like property values – it increases social capital, too. Social capital is essentially a measure of community. Your friend, your neighbor, the guy who pours your coffee: they're all social capital.
They're all part of your daily network, and they each do their part to enrich your daily life. They make you feel less isolated, they tell you about a job opening, and they'll watch your laptop while you're in the bathroom. And you'd do the same for them. Together, you're building social capital.

Social capital increases with walkability. You're more likely to bump into your neighbor at the store if it's right around the corner. You're more likely to stop at the same coffeeshop if it's on your walk to work. These daily interactions strengthen and build on social capital, and they're more likely to occur if citizens are pedestrians.

But proximity isn't the only factor here. Safety – and keeping our public resources in good repair – matters, too. That's where SeeClickFix comes in. By engaging and empowering citizens to report things like a broken streetlight on Congress Avenue, or cracked sidewalks on Edgewood Avenue, SeeClickFix doesn't just build social capital online – it keeps it growing offline, too!

Can Graffiti and a Busy Signal From City Hall Lead to Entrepreneurial Opportunity?  It Did For Ben Berkowitz…..