B-Roll, Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Announces Launch of Unprecedented Effort to Fill Potholes and Repave Roads Across New York State

Earlier today Governor Kathy Hochul announced an unprecedented state effort to fill potholes and repave roads across New York State, following one of the coldest winters in recent memory. This month, State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) forces will conduct a statewide push to address potholes on state roads. In April, 215 crews will place more than 8,000 tons of asphalt to fill an anticipated 175,000 potholes statewide. Plans are in place to fill hundreds of thousands more as the weather permits over the months ahead.

B-ROLL of the Governor filling a pothole in Albany can be found on YouTube and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format.

VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

AUDIO: The Governor's remarks are available in audio form here.

PHOTOS: The Governor's Flickr page will post photos of the event here.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

 Alright, good morning on this nice, warm April morning — that's from someone from Buffalo. First of all, I want to thank our extraordinary leader of the DOT, Commissioner Marie Therese Dominguez, for all the work she has done leading this effort, and she's done such an incredible job, such extraordinary public service. I think about public service, you come right to the top of the list there. And Frank Hoare, our Executive Director of the New York State Thruway Authority, all those hundreds and hundreds of miles you have to maintain and keep them safe as well, so on behalf of a grateful public, I want to thank both of you.

I'm here to say, “Potholes, your days are numbered.” Literally numbered. We're counting how many we're taking down. I just took down one. This week we're planning on eliminating over 44,000 potholes statewide, by the end of the month, 175,000, by the end of the year — if we hit last year's number — it's 1.3 million, but I think we're going to go even higher than that. Are we not? Okay, we're going to break last year's record.

This will be the biggest year in state history for road paving. I'm here to say that we understand the pain and frustration of drivers. Think about the typical mom having to take her kids to school, hits a pothole, now all of a sudden there's damage to the wheel axle, the tires, some other damage, now has to take time to go into a repair shop and wait and pay the cost of that repair. Now, that's a mom who's also paying astronomically high car insurance, also paying more than $4 a gallon starting now because of the war in Iran. So, our drivers are under enormous stress, so if we can help alleviate that by, right now, aggressively going after those potholes, that is our mission. So we're going to do that for everyone here. We're also, it's about our economy. Our economy requires our delivery trucks, our commercial vehicles, our large tractor trailers, to be able to go smoothly without disruption, and at the speeds that are allowed by the speed limit, not having to go under speed because of potholes.

So we've made major investments to get this done. It doesn't happen by itself. My first Budget, we allocated $33 billion for a historic five-year plan. This year we've invested an additional 800 million to cover costs and facilitate 180 road projects. Now, this is on top of our ‘Pave Our Road' projects and ‘Bridge New York', so that's more than 4,000 miles of paving for this year alone. The Thruway Authority is similarly making huge investments as well in their budget, and last month we announced over 23 million for Nassau, Suffolk and Erie counties, so this is also part of our Budget. You don't hear as much about it. You're hearing more about the efforts to build more housing by changing the SEQRA laws, reducing our car insurance costs by changing our laws there as well and making sure that we address challenges with our climate law, which we all believe in, we just need a longer roadway.

But while you're going to hear about those, don't forget that a budget is also about delivering basic services, and I want to put a special exclamation point on that here today by coming here. That's why we're fighting for everyday New Yorkers to buy that home, to be able to afford that tank of gas, to have the utility bills not keep going higher and higher.

So that's what we're looking forward to getting done. I want to thank our Commissioner here if she has any comments on what we're doing. In fact, I have a question for her — tell us why after such a brutal winter, we have more work than ever before. Tell us what this meant to have a statewide weather event that was quite extraordinary. Every corner of the state now has roads that have been compromised and why we need to do something about it. Ladies and gentlemen, our Commissioner, Marie Therese Dominguez. Thank you.