{"id":146023,"date":"2025-08-14T21:01:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T21:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/146023\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T21:01:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T21:01:10","slug":"uber-driver-becomes-dallas-311-app-power-user-after-tire-loss-nbc-5-dallas-fort-worth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/146023\/","title":{"rendered":"Uber driver becomes Dallas 311 app power user after tire loss \u2013 NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adam Sharkey estimates that he drives anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500 miles per week on roads across North Texas.<\/p>\n

The sales professional says many of those miles are spent traversing Dallas city streets.<\/p>\n

In May, Sharkey, who sometimes picks up Uber shifts, says he struck a curb at night that lacked reflective paint, making it impossible to spot before his 2024 Toyota Corolla hit it, costing him a tire.<\/p>\n

He says that moment led him to action.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was raised in New Jersey post 9-11, so I was taught as a young kid \u2018see something, say something,’\u201d Sharkey said. \u201cThat’s not just, you know, suspicious packages – it’s potholes, it’s traffic signs, it’s things that have been knocked over in the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

He turned the frustration of losing a tire, and drawing on his sense of civic responsibility, reached for his phone and added the city of Dallas 311 app<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\"<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the amount of driving that I do, I’ve realized that, well, the more you report, the more gets fixed right,\u201d Sharkey said.<\/p>\n

Sharkey turned to Reddit, beginn<\/a>i<\/a>ng a thread in June<\/a> for discussing issues addressed by Dallas 311, and for creating a space to achieve similar results in other North Texas cities.<\/p>\n

In the nearly three months since, Sharkey estimates he\u2019s filed more than 500 individual 311 tickets for everything from potholes to faded and damaged signs to low-hanging limbs over roadways or obstructing signs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was waiting for the day my account was going to be suspended or something because of filing so many tickets,\u201d he laughed, after driving an NBC-5 crew around parts of southeast Dallas recently.<\/p>\n

Daisy Fast, the director of the city\u2019s 311 customer service center, said she first learned of Sharkey\u2019s power use of 311 when the Dallas Observer<\/a> shared his story.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\"<\/p>\n

\u201cI love it,\u201d Fast said recently. \u201cHe’s kind of an ambassador for us right now, really promoting the app.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fast says his strategy of filing single reports for issues helps inspectors identify new locations that need to be addressed. It also can be more effective than multiple people reporting the same issue, which results in the system closing out duplicate tickets, often before the issue has been resolved or repaired.<\/p>\n

The most recent community survey found 60% of respondents with an \u201cexcellent\u201d or \u201cgood\u201d rating for 311 service requests, but only 38% of respondents<\/a> said they utilized the service within the last year.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\"<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only thing I wish is that more people knew that they have just as much power as I do to get this stuff done,\u201d Sharkey said.<\/p>\n

Sharkey says the 311 app is intuitive and responsive in providing updates to his requests, and combined with a work schedule that allows him to go back and check on his reports, he says he sees results.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also changed the way he sees the city he\u2019s called home for the last seven years.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce you realize, this is the system and this is how it works, it’s like well, Dallas really does fix stuff,\u201d Sharkey said. \u201cThey fix a lot of stuff, and they fixed just about everything that I filed a ticket for so, yeah, I think I do see it differently.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Adam Sharkey estimates that he drives anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500 miles per week on roads across North…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":146024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,1596,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-146023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-dallas","10":"tag-texas","11":"tag-tx","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115029144936841774","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}