For Detroit residents, having an app to report everything from potholes to damaged street signs to broken lights has been a huge improvement in their quality of life, city officials say.

For the past two years, Detroiters have had “City Hall in your pocket” through the Improve Detroit mobile app. The app, which launched in 2015, has since helped residents resolve more than 67,000 issues across Detroit’s neighborhoods.

Mayor Mike Duggan on Monday celebrated the app’s two-year anniversary and highlighted how the Improve Detroit app has taken care of these issues and many more, including fallen trees and missing traffic signs.

At the event, Mayor Duggan displayed how on-site cleanup had begun on an illegal dumpsite thanks to the Detroit App. The location near the Southbound Lodge Freeway Service Drive near Northlawn is the first of several small illegal dumping sites within a few blocks of each other reported recently through the Improve Detroit App.

This app uses your location and gives you a menu of common quality-of-life conditions to choose from in your service request. Uploading a photo with your report also helps the City staff quickly identify the problem. You may comment on your submissions and you will be notified when the status of the issue is updated.

The Improve Detroit app is part of his ongoing effort to make city government more efficient and accessible to its residents. The app is available for download on Google Play and the Apple Store.

Once the report has been submitted, Improve Detroit will route the issue to the appropriate department and generate a work order that can be tracked by our departments and the general public. The app sends automatic notifications allowing the person submitting the complaint to track the issue and when it is resolved, the Mayor said.

In two years, Improve Detroit has addressed (among others):

• 8,913 illegal dumping complaints in an average of 5.9 days
• 5,888 potholes in an average of 3.7 days
• 5,412 tree issues in an average of 41 days
• 4,237 abandoned vehicles in an average of 5.1 days
• 3,448 traffic sign issues in an average of 5 days

Every time an issue is reported, an electronic service request is generated.  Each department – and the Mayor himself – track how long it takes to respond.  By the nature of the repairs needed, some issues take longer to resolve, such as removing dead trees (41 days), fixing faulty catch basins (105 days) or repairing broken fire hydrants (25 days).

“This new approach to addressing citizen concerns has really transformed how the City delivers its most basic services to its residents,” Mayor Duggan said. “I run into people all the time who tell me they reported an issue through Improve Detroit and how well it worked for them.”

With spring now here, the City and many residents will engage in activities to help keep the city clean and to address issues that may have lingered over the winter.  Improve Detroit can be a great tool, said DPW Director Ron Brundidge, whose department fields the most requests.

“The Improve Detroit app is a great way to let us know about a new pothole that has formed or a missing stop sign in your neighborhood,” said Brundidge. “If people report the issues using the app, there is no confusion about where it gets sent and how it will be followed up on. We have a digital trail for every complaint from the time it comes in to the time it is resolved.”

  app, detroit, improve detroit, Mayor Mike Duggan