The 411 on 311: Counting the pothole, pest and parking complaints of 2024

Potholes. Rats. Illegal parking. Broken street light. Trash pick-up. More potholes. Parking violation. Trash. Street cleaning. Loud party. Graffiti. More parking.

Every day, people submit hundreds of service requests to Boston 311, the city's non-emergency hotline. They call or use the app to access city services for a wide array of concerns.

Taken together, 311 calls are a window into issues unique — or not — to Boston. With the year almost wrapped up, here are some 311 numbers worth knowing.

As of Dec. 10, there were 287,148 service requests submitted to the 311 line this year, down about 4% from the same date last year but up 8% from the one before that.

Service requests came in at an average rate of 835* every day. That’s about one every two minutes. Technically it's 834.7 but we like round numbers.

Far and away, people most commonly used 311 to complain about parking. There were 60,423 reports in total.

The second most common type of call was about street cleaning, with 21,873 requests made.

The month with the most calls was August with 31,011. That's more than a thousand calls a day.

The crush of requests come as college students move in or out of housing, according to Daniel Nee, superintendent of street operations at the Department of Public Works.

Anyone's who's experienced Allston Christmas could guess that a bunch of August's calls were about trash.

Dorchester saw the most reports, a total of 38,577. But it’s also the biggest and most populous neighborhood.

The biggest concentration of calls came from the financial district, downtown. Here, there were about 110 calls for every 100 residents.

We counted 8,179 requests to pick up a dead animal, 5,184 complaints of rodents, 23 rat bites, and 21 pigeon infestations.

There were 668 calls for loud parties this year, which should come as no surprise for a city that's home to dozens of colleges. October was the rowdiest month, with 128 complaints.