data . willkara
article · 2026-05-13 · ~6 min · live data

The seasonal city

Two categories define Philly's 311 winter — Salting and Shoveling, both literally 100% winter. Almost everything else peaks in summer.

The story this story was originally going to tell — that Philadelphia's 311 line lights up in a January cold snap with heating complaints and burst-pipe reports — turns out not to be a story the data supports. Heat, gas, and water-main calls don't go through 311 at all; they route directly to the utilities (PGW for gas, PWD for water). What the 311 dataset actually has, on the cold-weather side, is two categories: Salting and Shoveling. Both are literally 100% winter — they don't get filed in any other season because there's nothing to salt or shovel.

The two-category winter

Here are Salting and Shoveling, week by week, since 2022-01-01. The peaks line up with the snow events that residents actually called the city about. They're sparse: most weeks of the year have zero calls in either category.

Salting

peaks January · 18,434 total

Shoveling

peaks January · 6,568 total

The much wider summer

The other side of the calendar is busier and broader. 6 categories with strong summer signals are below: Street Trees, Parks and Rec Safety and Maintenance, Maintenance Complaint, Dangerous Sidewalk, Illegal Dumping, Sanitation Violation. None of them are entirely summer (people still call in February), but the warm-weather swell is clearly visible in each weekly sparkline.

Street Trees

peaks August · 18,980 total

Parks and Rec Safety and Maintenance

peaks August · 10,015 total

Maintenance Complaint

peaks August · 149,861 total

Dangerous Sidewalk

peaks July · 13,778 total

Illegal Dumping

peaks July · 95,985 total

Sanitation Violation

peaks July · 27,939 total

The seasonal flip, ranked

Across all 311 categories with at least 5,000 calls since 2022-01-01, here's the share of each category's year that falls in meteorological summer (June, July, August). A bar at 25% is a flat year — calls evenly spread across all four seasons. Anything above ~28% is summer- leaning. Salting and Shoveling sit at 0% (they're both shown as zero-width bars at the bottom); Street Trees lands at the top of the list.

seasonal share · since 2022-01-01 · categories with > 5K calls

Share of each category's calls in June–August

  1. Street Trees
    42.9%
  2. Parks and Rec Safety and Maintenance
    35.6%
  3. Maintenance Complaint
    35.1%
  4. Dangerous Sidewalk
    33.2%
  5. Illegal Dumping
    31.1%
  6. Sanitation Violation
    30.5%
  7. Rubbish/Recyclable Material Collection
    30.5%
  8. Inlet Cleaning
    30.2%
  9. Homeless Encampment Request
    30.0%
  10. Right of Way Unit
    28.3%
  11. Dangerous Building Complaint
    28.2%
  12. Fire Safety Complaint
    27.0%
  13. License Complaint
    26.3%
  14. Construction Complaints
    25.9%
  15. Abandoned Vehicle
    25.8%
  16. Street Light Outage
    25.5%
  17. Alley Light Outage
    25.4%
  18. Traffic (Other)
    24.9%
  19. LI Escalation
    24.8%
  20. Other (Streets)
    24.7%
  21. Graffiti Removal
    24.2%
  22. Traffic Calming Request
    23.8%
  23. Street Defect
    23.2%
  24. Information Request
    21.7%
  25. Traffic Signal Emergency
    21.2%
  26. Smoke Detector
    19.4%
  27. Salting
    0.0%
  28. Shoveling
    0.0%
0 42.9% max

A perfectly flat-year category would land at 25% (one quarter of the calendar). The median-volume row also shows its winter share for comparison: see the table below.

Show winter share alongside summer share
categorywintersummertotal
Street Trees14.2%42.9%18,980
Parks and Rec Safety and Maintenance15.8%35.6%10,015
Maintenance Complaint17.3%35.1%149,861
Dangerous Sidewalk15.9%33.2%13,778
Illegal Dumping20.4%31.1%95,985
Sanitation Violation20.6%30.5%27,939
Rubbish/Recyclable Material Collection27.1%30.5%135,614
Inlet Cleaning18.8%30.2%12,358
Homeless Encampment Request18.0%30.0%9,121
Right of Way Unit20.6%28.3%8,221
Dangerous Building Complaint20.0%28.2%10,330
Fire Safety Complaint23.4%27.0%7,295
License Complaint18.8%26.3%22,788
Construction Complaints20.8%25.9%29,749
Abandoned Vehicle22.7%25.8%127,534
Street Light Outage27.5%25.5%55,395
Alley Light Outage22.4%25.4%10,411
Traffic (Other)21.0%24.9%15,567
LI Escalation25.1%24.8%15,723
Other (Streets)24.2%24.7%28,856
Graffiti Removal25.2%24.2%54,032
Traffic Calming Request24.7%23.8%5,829
Street Defect24.4%23.2%68,336
Information Request25.9%21.7%1,331,469
Traffic Signal Emergency28.9%21.2%21,629
Smoke Detector29.1%19.4%14,833
Salting100.0%0.0%18,434
Shoveling100.0%0.0%6,568

Two readings of the same chart

There are two honest ways to read the warm-weather swell. The first is straightforward: when the weather is warmer, more people are outside, more outdoor problems become visible (downed branches, cracked sidewalks, dumped tires), and so more calls get filed. The second is a methodology footnote dressed up as a story: more people outside also means more callers, independent of any change in conditions. Both are true, and neither alone explains the pattern. The chart shows what the city's call rhythm looks like — not, by itself, what its underlying-conditions rhythm looks like.

Data Sources

Primary dataset: Philadelphia 311 service-and-information requests (public_cases_fc) via phl.carto.com. Restricted to calls since 2022-01-01. Frozen at deploy (2026-05-13).

Queries: weeklyByCategorySql(ALL_CATEGORIES, '2022-01-01') for the per-category weekly sparklines (winter + summer panels) and seasonalShareSql('2022-01-01') for the bottom ranking. The category lists (WINTER_CATEGORIES, SUMMER_CATEGORIES) are constants in +page.server.ts picked from a probe of all categories with >5K calls since 2022-01-01. SQL builders live in src/lib/data/datasets/philly-311.ts.

Methodology & caveats: "Summer" = June–August; "winter" = December–February (meteorological seasons). Salting and Shoveling at 0% summer share comes straight from seasonalShareSql's output. For the full caveat list, see how we read the data.