Let’s ClickFix Kingston
Most of us don’t wander around Kingston with a shovel and a trailer load of asphalt. That said, in your travels you’ve probably noticed the monstrous potholes lining Brock Street, a road closure due to construction, or even inappropriate graffiti on public property. Although the City of Kingston provides a comprehensive list of road, sidewalk and utility projects that may impact your ability to move freely about the Limestone City, the text format is not interactive, nor is it easy to use when your concerned about a specific intersection. Is there a better way to identify and share these problems with City Officials and fellow citizens? Kingstonist thinks so!
Without further ado, it gives me great pleasure to unveil Kingston’s very own ClickFix! What’s ClickFix you ask? It’s best described as a community-driven tool that gives everyone the ability to identify problems (huge pothole, unsafe intersection, defaced building etc…), and suggest ways to resolve them. ClickFix was dreamt up with some pretty lofty aspirations:
Imagine a world where every citizen feels empowered and part of their neighborhood. Imagine if everyone trusted and felt taken care of by their local government. We know there are already a lot of involved citizens and hard-working local authorities and service people. We seek to use the power of the internet to bring them closer together and reach even more people.
Heck if it can work in Boston, why not in the Limestone City? With idealistic goals mind, I want to invite you to visit Kingston’s ClickFix and help us identify as many problem areas as you can. With a bit of luck it might even grab the attention of someone at City Hall, and maybe even speed up the process of getting things done around Kingston. Thanks to ambimb for the photo of the city-eating pothole.
@kook I fully agree that the functionality of the map is limited, but it is a pretty new service and this is the free version. My understanding is that ClickFix is launching a premium (read pay) service in the future, that is bound to be more flexible. In the meantime, this will have to do! Keep up those updates people!
I think that is a great idea! Ideally the City website would house this feature and use their own KMaps feature to do it.
The ClickFix interface, while a great idea, looks pretty poorly thought out. Why make the map so small? Why use a pretty basic engine for this purpose? For example, a road closure is not well defined by a single dot, it should be a line. Also, When someone zooms into the map, all of the features should automatically show up in that area, potholes, road closures, sunken manholes, etc…
Anyway, like I said – great idea! The interface just needs considerable work for it to become the tool it could be.
Fair enough – it is a great idea and a good start. It would be impressive to see the City take ownership of these issues and allow citizens to provide input, via their own website, to where Public Works/Utilities Kingston/City of Kingston should emphasize their maintenance efforts.