Every feature, explained the way you'd explain it to a friend over coffee. No jargon. No tech-speak. Just what the app does and why it matters.
Several ways to tell the world about a problem — designed so that even a 30-second window between meetings is enough.
Tap the “+” button, pick what you're reporting, snap a photo. The app fills in your location automatically and sends it. That's it. Built for people who don't have time for forms.
A guided five-step wizard for when you want to add multiple photos, drag the location pin to the exact spot, and rate the severity in detail. Same idea, more polish.
Say “Report pothole” or “Fix this” out loud and the app starts a report — hands-free. Useful while driving when you can't safely fumble with a phone.
The app talks you through the whole thing and listens to your answers. You never have to look at the screen. Designed for visually impaired users and anyone using the app while moving.
Your phone knows roughly where you are. The app drops a pin on a map, and you can drag it to the exact spot. The address fills in by itself.
After you take a picture, an AI checks it: “That looks like a medium pothole, about 18 inches across, on a paved road.” It pre-fills the form with what it sees so you barely have to type.
The camera shows simple tips while you're aiming: “Hold a shoe next to it for scale” or “Photograph from about 3 feet away.” Your reports come out clearer; the AI gets more accurate.
If you turn it on, the app notices when your car hits something hard. It asks “Was that a pothole?” so you can confirm and report it without taking your hands off the wheel.
You don't need an account. You can report without ever telling us who you are. Your name and email are never attached unless you choose.
No signal? No problem. Reports save on your phone and send themselves the moment you reconnect. Subway commuters, rural areas, parking garages — all fine.
Not just potholes. The original 24 physical-infrastructure categories (streetlights, sidewalks, signage, crosswalks, water mains, sewers, fallen trees, snow and ice, bike lanes, abandoned vehicles, illegal dumping, parks, and more) plus 39 Access & Equity categories added in the 2026 expansion — covering missing curb cuts, broken elevators in public housing, missing bus shelters, English-only signage where translation is required, broken city website forms, and more. Full taxonomy at /access-equity.
The questions adapt to what you're reporting. Potholes get asked about size and danger. Streetlights get asked about urgency. You never see questions that don't apply.
One person yelling about a pothole is easy to ignore. Ten people pointing at the same one isn't.
When three different people report the same issue at the same place, it's marked “community-verified.” This filters out one-off complaints and confirms real problems.
If someone reports a dangerous hazard near you, the app may ping you: “Can you confirm? It's 200m from where you are.” If you're heading that way anyway, one tap and a photo helps.
“Upvote” means “this matters.” “Confirm” means “I've seen it too.” Both push the report higher in priority. Cities pay attention to volume.
About to report something that already has eight reports on it? The app notices and asks “Add yours to this one?” — so you're not creating extra noise, you're amplifying a real signal.
Rally the neighborhood. Create a campaign called “Fix Elm Street,” set a goal, and watch progress. Turns scattered complaints into organized momentum.
Once enough people care, the app does the boring paperwork and contacts the right person at the right department for you.
The app knows your local government boundaries. It figures out whether your issue belongs to the city, the county, or the state — and who at that level to contact. 795 US authorities pre-loaded across 46 states, with MA / RI / NH primary coverage.
When ten reports about the same problem pile up over 30 days, the app drafts a professional demand letter for you to review and send yourself — with photos, GPS data, fiscal projections, statutory citation, and community verification count. The reporter is always the sender; Fault Line does not transmit letters on your behalf.
Boston, Cambridge, and hundreds of other cities have systems Fault Line can talk to directly. Reports go straight into their ticket queues with real tracking numbers — no email needed.
For those connected cities, when they mark something “fixed” in their system, your app updates automatically. You'll know when it's done.
Reports rated “extremely dangerous” skip the normal threshold. They're flagged immediately and prioritized for the fastest possible escalation.
Tools that turn “this is annoying” into “this is going to cost the city money if they don't fix it.”
Tap one button and the app generates a formal legal notice citing your state's actual statute. It tracks the legal deadline. You can email it directly to the right office.
If you've already hit the pothole and need to file a claim, one tap creates a complete evidence bundle: timestamped GPS, photos, the city's notification history, and community confirmation count. Send it to your insurance.
The app shows authorities the numbers: “Fix this for $75 today, or face $12,000 in liability next year.” We do the math. Inaction becomes the expensive option.
The clock starts when the city is notified. Everyone can see how long they're taking. Miss the deadline? Everyone who reported it gets a notification.
If the same pothole was “fixed” by Contractor X and reopens three months later, Fault Line records that. Their failure rate becomes public.
After a fix, nearby users photograph the result. The AI grades it: Excellent, Good, Adequate, Poor, or Failed. Bad work re-opens the report automatically.
If the same spot is photographed over weeks or months, the app stitches the photos into a visual timeline of neglect. Powerful when shared on social media.
Record a 15-second video about how the issue affects your life. It gets attached to escalation emails. Spreadsheets are easy to ignore. Faces aren't.
Public data nobody can hide from. Comparative pressure between cities is the most powerful force in local politics.
Every city gets a public letter grade — A through F — based on how many issues there are, how fast they're fixed, and how serious they are. Updates in real time.
“Your city: D+. Next town: B+.” Side-by-side rankings between neighbors. Nothing motivates a mayor like being beaten by the town next door.
See which council member's district has the most unresolved issues. Know who represents you. Know their record. Vote accordingly.
“Your city allocated $4.2M for roads. $1.8M spent. 340 issues remain.” Follow the money — for cities that publish their budgets openly.
Based on three years of community data, the app can guess where the next round of damage will appear. Cities can be told to fix things before they break — saving real money.
Each street gets its own grade and projected repair timeline. “Elm Street has a 78% chance of needing major repair within 12 months.”
Local reporters can subscribe to alerts, download data exports, and pull authority performance reports. Better infrastructure stories. More accountability.
Every report shows what the repair would actually cost — based on Federal Highway Administration data. Aggregate it across a city and you see the real backlog.
Civic engagement is hard to sustain. We borrowed a few tricks from games and habit-building apps.
Report something every day, build a streak. Seven days = 50 bonus points. Thirty days = 200 points. It feels good, and it works.
Every action earns points. Points unlock badges. Badges show on your profile. Some people are motivated by saving the world; some are motivated by earning a “First 100 Reports” badge. Both groups end up reporting potholes.
Global, state, and city rankings. See who's making the biggest impact in your community. Top contributors get featured.
Real-time activity near you: new reports, fresh resolutions, milestone moments, community campaigns.
Local businesses can sponsor rewards: “Report 10 issues this month, get a free coffee.” Real perks. Real participation.
Every Sunday: how many reports in your area, how many got fixed, who's responding. Stay informed without opening the app every day.
The app gradually learns your routines and surfaces information that's actually useful to you.
If you opt in, the app learns where you usually drive. When a pothole shows up on your morning route, it tells you — and lets you know how many more reports it needs to escalate.
Approaching a known hazard on your route? Your phone vibrates with a heads-up: “Caution: large pothole 200 feet ahead on your right.” Crowdsourced safety.
Not spam. Context. “Your report was acknowledged.” “3 more reports needed for escalation.” “The city missed their deadline.” You can mute everything during quiet hours.
Point your camera at the road. Floating markers appear over the live view, color-coded by severity, showing nearby reports. Tap any marker for details.
Download your area so the map works without cell service. Useful in basements, subways, rural areas, and hiking trails.
Built for everyone — not just tech-savvy English speakers.
English, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and Haitian Creole — the most common languages spoken in MA, RI, and NH. Auto-detects what your phone is set to.
Every button, every label, every interaction works with VoiceOver and TalkBack. Tested with the actual tools real users rely on.
The fully voice-driven flow. The app speaks; you respond out loud. Zero screen touches. Designed for blind and low-vision users from day one.
If you've made your phone's text bigger in system settings, Fault Line follows. Nothing gets cut off. Nothing breaks.
Enhanced contrast colors and larger touch targets for users with low vision. Reduce-motion is honored too.
The 39 categories added in 2026 covering the failures 311 handles worst — because routing is fragmented across ADA coordinators, transit authorities, public housing authorities, and school districts.
Missing curb cuts, broken ramps, ADA-blocked paths, sidewalk dead-ends, broken accessible pedestrian signals. Routes to your municipal ADA coordinator with 28 CFR Part 35 framing.
Broken elevators, broken heat or AC crossing safety thresholds, mold violations, missing accessibility features. Routes to your local Public Housing Authority plus HUD FHEO for federal complaint.
Missing bus shelters, broken shelters, missing benches, ADA-inaccessible platforms. Routes to your transit authority (MBTA / RIPTA / etc.) with FTA 49 CFR Part 37 framing.
Broken city website forms, screen-reader-inaccessible PDFs, missing translations, WCAG accessibility violations, broken mobile apps. Anchored in the 2024 DOJ web-accessibility rule.
Missing crossing guards, dangerous school walk routes, missing shade in heat-vulnerable neighborhoods, missing public restrooms, broken drinking fountains, missing benches on senior-housing routes.
Missing braille signage, English-only signage where translation is legally required, missing large-print, illegible signs, missing audible signage at transit hubs.
Beyond the 10-second point report.
Report a systemic pattern along a street segment, not just a single point — because cities respond to segments, not GPS pins. Auto-suggested when reports concentrate along a road; community-approved before publishing.
DPW inspectors, city IT managers, transit workers can file infrastructure observations residents can't see. Scope is narrowly bounded to infrastructure only — not personnel, criminal, classified, or retaliation, with referrals to the right channel for those.
Physical infrastructure conditions on privately-owned commercial property (broken sidewalks, inaccessible entrances, dangerous parking-lot lighting). Individual reports never publish; only aggregations after 5+ verified reports from 3+ reporters, with a 14-day right-of-reply window.
For digital infrastructure failures (broken forms, inaccessible PDFs), the flow switches to URL-first with an automated page snapshot. Cities can't remediate the URL and later claim the report was inaccurate — the snapshot is the evidence.
What Fault Line produces beyond individual reports.
Cities that clear a minimum-data threshold get a public grade weighted from fix rate, response time, backlog severity, and recurrence. Methodology fully published; cities cannot pay to hide their grade.
The counterweight to shame — a public record of the DPW crews that fix reported hazards fastest. Verified via community re-photo, peer-normalized against similar-size cities.
Every council member of record gets a monthly briefing packet for their district: metrics, top items likely to reach constituent-services, fastest resolutions to credit, equity flags. Non-partisan by design.
When a cluster crosses a threshold (20+ reports, 90+ days past statutory deadline), subscribed local journalists get a ready-to-publish summary with suggested headline, key numbers, GPS-tagged evidence, and right-of-reply from the responsible authority.
A public reference at /claim-by-state covering MA, RI, NH, ME, VT, CT, NY, CO, OR, NM. Notice periods, damage caps, primary-source citations. Answers "how long do I have to file?" for anyone with a defective-highway claim.
Every generated letter is composed from three versioned datasets with chain-of-custody disclosure in the footer.
Categories map to one of five framings: state defective-highway statutes (physical infra), ADA Title II (public-entity access), Fair Housing + Section 504 (public housing), Title VI + EO 13166 (language access), or DOT ADA (transit). Each framing determines the letter's headline, citation, notice-period, and federal-fallback complaint pathway.
Every dataset entry — statute, routing, letter template, ADA standard — is versioned and marked "verified" only after a qualified reviewer signs off. Until then, every generated letter carries an unreviewed-content banner so the reporter sees the warning before sending.
Every generated letter footer identifies the specific dataset entry, version, and review status backing every claim. If a recipient challenges the letter, they can trace every element to its source.
Every report you submit is a vote for better infrastructure. Together, we make it impossible to ignore.
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