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Procedures for Repair of Potholes in Asphalt-Surfaced Pavements
I think they should have included the official NYC procedure, which is:

1. Dig out around the affected area

2. leave massive dent in the surface for what seems like years

3. Maybe cover it with a few janky bits of wood and/or metal sheets that make a hideous clanking noise all day and night and have the same approximate surface friction as an ice rink so are pretty murderous to any 2-wheeled road user

4. Leave this solution to mature like a fine wine

5. I really mean single malt whiskey. You can leave it basically as long as you like

6. There is no step six.

I like Atlanta’s solution even better: after becoming egregious enough sloppily bolt down a much too tall metal plate over the pothole and those that have proliferated nearby. Cross fingers and hope they won’t coalesce as a sink hole and as with everything else: “Go Dawgs”
Whoa, fancy. All we get are open pits with a few barricades around them until the news finally starts talking about the tree growing in the middle of the road.
Luxury! We used to dream of open pits. All we ever had were craters filled with broken glass and burning petrol. And surrounded by rabid alligators.
My understanding is the DOT gets pissy if locals fill in the pothole themselves, but I imagine that there's enough interested people to do vigilante road repair if they weren't subject to government harrassment.
My understanding is the DOT gets pissy if locals fill in the pothole themselves

People in Chicago sometimes do this.

It's common enough that WGN Morning News parodied it by having its sports anchor go out and start filling potholes with giardiniera.

https://wgntv.com/video/pat-fills-potholes-with-giardiniera/...

"Vigilante Road Repair" - cool band name - I call it!
nobody leaves a dent in the surface on purpose, the problem is that whatever caused the pothole is almost certainly still causing it to sink under the surface. A patch doesn't fix the problem, it just makes it less bad.
The local obscenely named utility company dug in our road a few years ago, necessitating a large patch. They proceeded to drive through their patch as they left. The tire dents & ridges are still there years later. You're right, of course, but I think you may be overestimating the concern patch crews give to their craft.
Yep. Step 0 in the above list is "build a road with insufficient subsurface/foundation preparation and drainage"
There's a section of town that was developed on an old swampy bit of land. They drained the swamp but did not let the land dry/settle long enough after draining the water. This caused parts of the road to sink, but not enough to break/crack the roads. Instead, they just have swells as you're driving along. It's actually impressive on how much sinking happened without breaking the road itself.
Less bad is ok.
Montreal has joined the chat...
The root of the problem (literally) is that when potholes appear it's mostly because what's under became too porous and humid so what's over it separates easily. Patching the hole isn't a good fix but the alternative is closing roads which wrecks the economy. The other problem is that the public always asks: "why isn't it patched ?" and if you don't do it you look like you're not competent enough to be in charge. And the cycle continues.
And when you go to your local government, demand a fix, they'll contract a union shop to do the work, often mandated by law, and they will advocate for the least durable, most expensive fix, so as to ensure recurring work happens at a maximum frequency. Attention to certain roads, duration of work is often politicized - someone with good friends gets quick, top tier fixes, but someone who annoys the local council might see months of roadwork dragging on forever, or halfassed repairs, or potholes ignored for years.

Lovely little civilization we have, eh?

edit: Huh, must be nice to live in places where that apparently doesn't happen? It's been a comically recurring theme in nearly every city I've lived in - potholes weren't just potholes, they were favors and tools and penalties and grifts. If you've never seen this happen, I'd recommend digging a bit deeper. Very few places have their collective shit together sufficiently to handle the relatively small problems like potholes very well. If your community does, then kudos!

Reading all of the crabby comments about pothole repair make me feel great about my city in MN. Leave voice mail about pothole on my way to work in morning, pothole filled when I return home in the afternoon.
You haven't lived until you've paid municipal taxes to see one of these things at work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVFFsKArEFk

I've literally watched them approach a pothole full of water, blow the water out with compressed air, retract the blower while the pothole refills, excrete asphalt mix into the watery hole then pat it down and compress it with a roller -- then proceed to the next pothole, driving over and denting the just-"repaired" one.

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Even in the video it looks like it does a terrible job. Hilariously he drives past all the other potholes that was just shown at the beginning of the video.
Yeah, but on the plus side, you're supporting local jobs!
In my beautiful hometown of Philadelphia they have a novel way of repairing potholes that I've yet to observe in other cities:

1. Do nothing for 9 months. This allows the pothole to mature until ready for step 2.

2. Put a traffic cone in the pothole.

3. After a couple weeks of public notice (traffic cone) dump hot asphalt into the hole, making sure to top off several inches above street level.

4. DO NOT WAIT for asphalt to cool down before opening the street. This allows for asphalt to stick to tires, shoes etc.

5. Make sure to leave a significant bump and don't compact the asphalt so next winter it will open up again.

6. Make sure to put any utility covers (manholes, drains etc) directly in the wheel path for maximum damage.

7. Profit!

Philadelphia is blessed by several feet of sub-street layers (stone fill, belgian block, concrete backfill, and terrible asphalt), embedded rail, pipes, and utilities that are all owned and managed by different local, state, and private entities. Oh and fairly wide temperature swings throughout the year, generous precipitation, salt, and let's not forget the drivers themselves. It's a miracle the roads are in as good a shape as they are - but it does have a traffic calming effect :)
A manual from the U.S. federal agency uses grams, meters, and Celsius temperatures? How come?
If nothing is being done about pot holes, consider drawing penises on them: https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-32448103
Oakland CA had a pothole vigilante group doing good work several years ago, bless their hearts. Not sure if they're still around, but their DIY approach was commendable and could be replicated. I believe they used "cold patch" asphalt which can be purchased at Home Depot and the like.

It sucks that illegal DIY approaches are necessary, but at some point people just need to take matters into their own hands. It feels like road repair is one of the most visible and perhaps common indicators of local government corruption. My personal favorite is when a perfectly good stretch of road gets repaved to use up tax dollars, while streets in terrible condition get ignored.

Does anyone know what is a post oil industry asphalt strategy? Do we have stockpiles till the end of time already?
Does anyone expect there will be a post oil industry? I would assume (with not particular knowledge on the subject mind) that once we wind down oil use for fuel and to some extent plastics, there will be enough oil in the ground to support enough extraction for asphalt and other currently trivial uses indefinitely.
Going back to cobblestone roads.
I did a little (very little, I asked an LLM) what it would cost to produce this report in today's dollars. The answer came in as roughly $90,000–$180,000. Worth it or accurate? I don't know but it is interesting.
Why fix them, it's free traffic calming.
As an aside, why do DoT pdfs have such gigantic margins/padding around the text content?
It allows note taking and corrections on drafts.

Same deal with things like SCOTUS opinions. (Random example: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-624_b07d.pdf)

I’d have thought the 20+ pages before getting to the point would have allowed scrap paper for notes.

Maybe the foreword, acknowledgements, preface and various notes contained something of value.

When you're driving a small car, do you expect the lanes to automatically shrink for you?

It's a standard so no one has to think "does this page have enough space", and the notes are often relevant to the current page. Stuff like the photo in https://www.thedailybeast.com/photo-details-obamas-speech-ed...

I was referring to the notes, notices and various preambles occupying the first quarter of the document.
Which are a very different sort of notes than the ones I'm talking about.

They print it out and people go over it with a pen, make corrections, comments, etc.

To me, I read it as they are stating those pages are really useless fluff that could essentially just be ripped out and used as scratch paper as they seemingly serve no other purpose.
Yes, this.

But as ceejayoz points out, taking notes on the actual page is better.

I was having a dig at how long it took for the document to get to the point.

Also allows flexibility in terms of binding options
Paper industry lobbying?