DAVID BYE never worried about potholes until he left San Diego for Indianapolis nearly five years ago to join his girlfriend. He’d never seen any large enough to swallow up a tire and rip it to shreds.
Now when winter hits, he encounters chuckholes nearly every time he hits the road and feels the rumble. “In California, I drove a Porsche 911,” he says. “It’s been in the garage for four years. I can’t drive it here. It shakes to death.”
Bye, 61, now drives a Subaru Outback and hasn’t blown a tire yet. “I’m good at getting around [potholes],” he says, or perhaps he’s just lucky.
But instead of whining about all the bumps in the road, Bye routinely reports them to the city’s Department of Public Works. This winter, he went the extra mile. On a recent brisk March morning, he hopped in his Outback in search of car-eating craters along four commuter routes: Guion Road, West 56th Street, Cooper Road, and West Kessler Boulevard North Drive. It didn’t take long for the magnitude of the pothole problem to sink in. Bye drove 8 miles of rough road and found 42 areas of asphalt, each with two to 10 potholes.
“These were basketball-sized potholes, and usually a cluster of them,” he says.
It proved a tedious process. Bye took scores of pictures and made sure he got the correct measurements and locations before reporting the potholes via the city’s Request Indy website.
Bye knows Indy is an older city with a budget not nearly big enough to solve its infrastructure challenges. DPW communications chief Kyle Bloyd noted this winter has been especially harsh on city roads. As of March 10, Request Indy had logged 11,700 complaints this winter. That’s 2,500 more than last year. Bloyd says Bye’s efforts “definitely help guide where the crews are.”
But potholes aren’t Bye’s only pet peeve. He’s also “disgusted” with the amount of litter lining many Indy roads (a year-round problem). Soon after moving here, he signed up with Keep Indianapolis Beautiful’s Adopt a Block program. Initially, he started with his westside neighborhood, which grew to include a much broader swath encompassing much of the west side.
“Really anywhere I go and see litter, I make a note and go back,” he says, adding the worst places are on bridges and over creeks.
Once a week, he heads out with his litter buggy, which he designed to hold his tools and 30-gallon bags. He spends several hours picking up all sorts of trash and illegally dumped items along several miles. He notes some of it is “pretty disgusting stuff,” making his long-arm trash grabber essential.
He’s also found wallets, money, a gun holster, and cameras. Most of what he finds either goes into a bag for recycling or one for the landfill.
It’s perhaps no surprise, but Bye is a self-described overachiever. He keeps a detailed spreadsheet of hours worked, miles driven, and pounds collected. The numbers are astounding. As of March 11, he had filled 886 30-gallon bags with trash since he began volunteering with KIB four years ago. That’s roughly 6,781 pounds of trash.
It’s no shock that Bye ranks as one of KIB’s top picker-uppers. He also posts before and after pics on NextDoor and five other social media sites.
“I tell [followers] what I did, how much litter I picked up. It’s kind of like evangelism,” he says.
KIB CEO Jeremy Kranowitz calls David’s efforts “amazing. … He’s out there doing the work, being part of the solution, and showing how rewarding it is.”
Bye formed Litter Solutions, an LLC to help cover his expenses. He says kudos and donations help the cause.
He still gets frustrated as potholes and litter never go away but says, “I take it as a challenge. I’m very tenacious, so I haven’t given up yet.”
