Pothole tire damage in Chattanooga

A pothole strike does its damage in a fraction of a second and most of what it breaks is invisible from the driver's seat. The tire that looks untouched at the kerb can be finished. The tire with a visible scuff can often be saved. You cannot tell which is which by looking, and neither can anyone else.

What Chattanooga does have, which a lot of cities do not, is an unusually complete public record of its own road surface. This page uses it.

The season here is March, and the city's own data says so

Pothole service requests to the City of Chattanooga, summed over the nine full years 2015 to 2023, which is 17,430 requests in total, by month of submission:

Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
1,489	2,010	2,229	1,783	1,551	1,500	1,423	1,335	1,096	1,075	812	1,127

March is the peak and November the trough over those nine years. March runs 2.74 times November (DERIVED: 2,229 divided by 812). January through March carries 5,728 of the 17,430 requests, which is 32.9 percent of the year inside a quarter of it (DERIVED: 5,728 divided by 17,430). February through April carries 6,022, which is 34.5 percent (DERIVED: 6,022 divided by 17,430).

If you have moved here from Dallas, that is two months earlier than the May peak in that city's own 311 archive. If you have moved here from a northern city, do not assume our winter shape matches yours either.

And the freeze-thaw window sits immediately in front of it

Counting days in the Chattanooga Lovell Field daily record where the minimum fell below 32F and the maximum rose above 32F — one full crossing in a single day — the thirty years 1996 to 2025 average 46.1 such days a year, median 49.5, ranging from 28 in 2019 and again in 2020 to 68 in 1996.

When they fall is the useful part. Over the same thirty years, 1,382 crossing days by month: January 449, December 371, February 288, November 143, March 117, April 7, October 7, and none at all from May through September. December, January and February alone carry 1,108 of the 1,382, which is 80.2 percent (DERIVED: 1,108 divided by 1,382). The window that matters is roughly 1 November to 31 March.

Two disciplines about that number, both of which we would rather state than have you assume.

We are not telling you freeze-thaw causes Chattanooga's potholes. The seasonal shapes line up and the timing is suggestive, but we read no city, state or academic source stating the mechanism for Chattanooga, and reporting behaviour, crew scheduling and the paving calendar could all be inside that March figure. We publish the months on both series and stop there.

And the 46.1 is not a league-table number. It is counted by us from the daily record on a same-day definition of our own, not a published index, and it is not comparable with crossing counts derived from monthly normals by other methods — including the one on our own Pittsburgh pages. We will not rank Chattanooga against another city on it.

Why the surface makes this a real story here

Chattanooga publishes a pavement condition index for its entire network, which a lot of cities do not. From the city's public works GIS, read 2026-09-20: 9,065 street sections, 2,188.9 miles, a mean condition score of 61.45 on a 0 to 100 scale, with a minimum of 0 and a maximum of 100.

By condition band, in miles:

Score band	Miles
0 to 40	411.0
40 to 55	376.5
55 to 70	590.2
70 to 85	559.8
Above 85	251.4

411.0 of 2,188.9 miles is 18.8 percent of the network at a score of 40 or below (DERIVED: 411.0 divided by 2,188.9). At 25 or below there are 496 sections and 119.7 miles, 5.5 percent (DERIVED: 119.7 divided by 2,188.9).

And the surface type matters. Grouped by surface over all 9,065 sections: asphalt concrete 8,744 sections and 2,110.1 miles at a mean score of 61.40; portland cement concrete 114 sections and 34.1 miles at 63.45; a few small classes behind them; and ten sections and 2.2 miles of gravel, at a mean score of 13.9, the lowest-scoring surface class in the layer. Asphalt is 2,110.1 of 2,188.9 miles, 96.4 percent of the network (DERIVED).

That is the structural difference from a concrete-first city. Dallas's own street manual says its new streets are concrete; Chattanooga's network is the opposite, and asphalt is the surface that comes apart in a freeze-thaw cycle.

Two more things the layer says, both worth a caveat. The layer is named PCI2020 and neither the service nor its catalogue entry states a survey date, so we describe it as the city's published pavement condition index layer and give the date we read it, rather than attaching a year to it. And the 2,188.9 miles is our sum over every section in that layer, not a network length the city publishes anywhere we could find.

Where the complaints and the bad pavement agree

Across the nine council districts present in the data, pothole requests for 2015 to 2023 run: District 7 2,031, District 9 1,787, District 8 1,710, District 3 1,676, District 4 1,561, District 2 1,558, District 5 1,504, District 6 1,431, District 1 1,375, with 2,797 rows carrying no district at all. The spread between the highest and lowest named district is 656 requests, which is narrow: Chattanooga does not have one district carrying the whole problem.

Mean pavement score by the same nine districts: District 9 56.7 across 243.7 miles, District 7 58.8 across 260.3, District 2 59.4, District 8 61.3, District 5 63.1, District 3 64.0, District 1 64.7, District 4 65.0, District 6 65.6 across 241.8 miles. District 9 has the lowest mean score of the nine and District 6 the highest, a spread of 8.9 points.

Put the two rankings together and they agree at the bottom: District 7 is first on complaints and second-lowest on pavement score; District 9 is second on complaints and lowest on pavement score. Ranking population for both statements: the nine council districts present in the city's own data.

By ZIP Code Tabulation Area, the highest count of the eighteen we queried is 37421, Hamilton Place and East Brainerd, at 2,928 requests over 2015 to 2023, followed by Brainerd 37411 at 1,709, Highland Park and Ridgedale 37404 at 1,606, East Chattanooga 37406 at 1,581 and North Chattanooga 37405 at 1,417.

One boundary fact that is worth more than it looks: the East Ridge ZCTA, 37412, logged 39 requests over those same nine years, against 1,709 in neighbouring Brainerd. East Ridge is a separately incorporated city and the City of Chattanooga's feed simply does not cover it. If you live there, none of the Chattanooga 311 numbers on this page describe your streets.

Two traps in the data, stated because we used it

The feed stops. The city's pothole layer holds 29,632 requests running from 11 February 2003 to 6 October 2024, and nothing newer exists in it. There is no 2025 or 2026 Chattanooga pothole data on this page because there is none to publish, and no newer dataset was found anywhere in the city's 1,003 published GIS items. Nothing here is a statement about this year.

The request type is spelled two ways. The same field carries "Potholes" on 16,473 rows and "Pothole" on 13,159. Filter on one and you lose the other, which is the kind of thing that silently halves somebody's analysis. The department field is messier still, including a literal entry reading "DO NOT USE!! CWS - Citywide Services PLEASE USE PW and appropriate department" on 606 rows.

For scale across the whole series, by calendar year: 2003 518, 2004 746, 2005 848, 2006 591, 2007 430, 2008 534, 2009 867, 2010 1,236, 2011 1,188, 2012 1,279, 2013 1,245, 2014 959, 2015 1,458, 2016 1,334, 2017 1,959, 2018 2,644, 2019 2,687, 2020 2,156, 2021 1,738, 2022 1,650, 2023 1,804, and 1,761 in 2024 up to 6 October. The peak year in the series is 2019. Mean time to close a request across the feed is 3.6 working days.

These are complaints rather than potholes, and they are not adjusted for population or road mileage.

What to check after you hit one

In this order, and none of it takes long.

1. Pressure, on all four, against the door placard rather than the sidewall. A strike can unseat a bead enough to leak slowly without looking like anything.
2. The sidewall, both faces. A bubble or a bulge is a broken cord inside the casing. That tire is finished and no repair is permitted on it. A bulge in the sidewall and a bubble in the tread cover what you are looking at.
3. The wheel rim, inner and outer lip, for a flat spot or a crack. A bent rim leaks at the bead and no amount of tire work fixes it.
4. How the car behaves. A new vibration at speed, a pull, or a thump once per wheel revolution are all worth a look. A thumping noise and humming that changes with speed cover the symptoms.

What a pothole can leave behind that is repairable is a tread puncture, no wider than a quarter of an inch, in the tread area only. Impact damage to the sidewall or the shoulder is not repairable by anybody, and the only way to tell an impact break from a clean puncture is to take the tire off the wheel and look at the inner liner.

And nobody is scheduled to check it for you

Chapter 9 of Title 55 of the Tennessee Code is where Tennessee puts its vehicle equipment standards, and enumerated in full it contains exactly two tire sections, neither of which sets a tread depth. The one vehicle check tied to a Hamilton County registration, the emissions test, ended on 13 January 2022, and while it ran it looked at the tailpipe, the gas cap and the engine computer rather than the tires.

So we measure. Tread depth on all four and the DOT date code at every visit, and we give you the numbers whether or not you buy anything. Tennessee against Georgia sets out why that measurement changes meaning six miles south of downtown.

Our price: $145 for the first tire

A mobile puncture repair on one tire is $145, and $50 for each additional tire in the same visit, with no separate call-out fee. It covers getting to the car, the wheel off, the tire demounted and inspected from the inside, a plug and patch, remounting, rebalancing, a TPMS reset where the vehicle supports it, and the wheel back on.

Pothole damage is the case where the answer is most often no. If the tire cannot be repaired we tell you on the spot: the inspection is charged, because it means travelling to the car and taking the tire off the rim, and the repair is not, because it did not happen. If you want it replaced we supply the tire and fit it at the same address, in the same visit.

What tire repair costs in Chattanooga shows how a Tennessee invoice is built, repair or replace covers the decision, what mobile tire replacement costs covers the alternative, and two tires or four covers how many you actually need.

Where to go next

Mobile tire repair in Chattanooga, flat tire repair, a slow leak, a nail in the tire, steep driveways, mountain roads and our Chattanooga service area. Nationally, when to replace your tires and a blowout on the highway.

Questions people ask

• When is pothole season in Chattanooga? March, on the city's own 311 record. Over the nine full years 2015 to 2023, March logged 2,229 requests and November 812, and January through March carried 32.9 percent of the year.
• Is that because of freeze-thaw? The freeze-thaw window sits immediately in front of it — 80.2 percent of crossing days fall in December, January and February — but we read no source stating the mechanism for Chattanooga, so we publish both calendars and do not assert a cause.
• How bad are the roads? The city's own pavement layer covers 2,188.9 miles at a mean score of 61.45, with 411.0 miles, 18.8 percent, at 40 or below. The network is 96.4 percent asphalt.
• What about this year's potholes? There is no 2025 or 2026 data. The city's feed stops on 6 October 2024 and nothing newer was found.
• Can a pothole puncture be repaired? Only if the damage is in the tread area and no wider than a quarter of an inch. Impact damage to the sidewall or shoulder cannot be repaired, and telling them apart needs the tire off the wheel.
• I live in East Ridge. Do these numbers apply to me? No. The East Ridge ZCTA logged 39 requests over the same nine years against 1,709 in neighbouring Brainerd, because East Ridge is a separately incorporated city outside the Chattanooga system.