Mayor Sean Ryan made fixing Buffalo’s potholes one of the cornerstones of his campaign last year, and Monday morning, the hot patch hit the road in Buffalo for the first time in decades.
Erie County Highway crews, which use the hot patch process exclusively when the material is available, were on hand with City of Buffalo streets crews today, sharing knowledge and equipment to make better pothole repairs.
Road crews in Buffalo abandoned hot patch for cold patch decades ago. Cold patch takes less special equipment to put into action; it can be loaded into the bed of a pickup truck instead of a specialty trailer. But the cold asphalt doesn’t stay in place, and the material is actually more expensive than hot patch.
Hot patch is asphalt that is produced to be used at very high temperatures so the patch not only fills the hole but adheres to the old road surface, creating a permanent bond and a long-term repair.
Using Erie County equipment, the combined crews made the first hot patch repairs to Buffalo streets in recent memory along Bailey Avenue.
The spots fixed were parts of Bailey where the remnants of Buffalo’s old streetcar system — abandoned in the 1940s — still cause trouble for East Side drivers in 2026. While Bailey-area residents await a planned rebuild of the street, the hot patch represents a better, more reliable fix than they’ve seen in decades.
Both Ryan and Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz underscored that these sorts of common sense partnerships, which are mutually beneficial for the county and the city, are something Western New York should expect more often. Governments working together, said Ryan, should be as basic an expectation as filling potholes.
“I said we were going to seek partnership with our government partners to help us solve our longstanding problems,” said Ryan. “The days of the City of Buffalo going it alone are over. So we're really proud to be standing here today with our governmental partners.”
Poloncarz said he’s “very pleased to be here today to help the city go in a different direction” with regards to better, longer lasting, more economically responsible street repair.
“We understand that the county cannot solve [the city's] financial problem,” said Poloncarz, “but we can help them along the way so that they can step forward and get to a better position.”
The hot patch material is more affordable than cold patch, but some equipment will have to be purchased by the city to keep the hot patch program going. Because the purchases are relatively small, Deputy Mayor Ben Swanekamp said it does not have to go through the capital budget process and the city’s Department of Public Works should have a hot box trailer and other equipment by summer time.
Meanwhile, county crews will be out with city crews several times a week until city crews get up to speed on the methods and get city-owned hot patch equipment.
