JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Potholes can make for a rough ride on Jacksonville roads.
Only on Action News Jax, we found out a company using Artificial Intelligence to scan roads, wants to bring its technology to Jacksonville and catch cracks before they become craters.
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It’s after an Action News Jax Investigation found the city has spent over $2 million on potholes in the last two years.
The AI tech is smaller than the size of a basketball but it’s built to spot big problems. The company who makes it is called Cyvl. They use AI to scan the roads of Jacksonville.
The vehicle-mounted sensor is looking for things like potholes, pavement cracks and street dangers that drivers likely can’t even see.
“How can we catch something when it’s just a small crack or maybe a sign is just starting to lean one way or another?” asks Cyvl’s CEO Daniel Pelaez.
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We connected with Pelaez after his company saw our Action News Jax investigation into potholes on Jacksonville roads.
He says for decades, cities like Jacksonville have relied on crews using clipboards and eyeballs, reacting sometimes after road damage is already done.
“We wanted to come up with a way for cities to be proactive. Identify issues before it’s a massive gaping pothole in the road,” Pelaez said.
We mounted the sensor on our car and rode with Pelaez as it scanned Jacksonville streets.
He showed us what the system sees, a 3D scan paired with street-view style video then AI flags trouble areas.
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“We’re using sensors. It’s LIDAR, which essentially uses lasers … plus 360 imagery … and then we apply AI … and automatically pick up these issues … everything from a big pothole to very small hairline cracks,” Pelaez said.
Inside the platform, roads get color-scored by condition and the AI can map individual cracks your eye might miss.
Cyvl said catching problems early can mean cheaper fixes; before a crack turns into a crater.
“This is what’s helping cities go so much further … it’s going to cost them 10% of what it will cost to fix it once it turns into a pothole,” Pelaez said.
That matters because potholes can get pricey in Jacksonville.
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In our recent Action News Jax investigation, we uncovered City of Jacksonville Public Works documents that show the city spent more than $2.2 million dollars on potholes since 2023 and paid out nearly $250,000 in claims in less than two years.
Crews then have to come out to those streets and make repairs.
So Cyvl’s pitch: why not put the tech on Public Works cars that are already driving around the city?
“They already have people driving around … so we’re like, great, let’s give you a sensor that’s plug and play. It’s effectively giving them the power of like 10 more employees, The AI is figuring out where are the issues and hopefully everyone’s happier and the roads are smoother at the end of the day,” Pelaez said.
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Our drive with Pelaez was an important one.
We drove him to his meeting with Jacksonville city leaders to talk about the very same tech that was attached to the top of our car scanning the roads.
“The city of Jacksonville has been very receptive,” Pelaez said.
He said the tech is also appealing because of its success stories in cities like Atlanta.
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“(Atlanta) had a massive need for understanding the conditions of their roadways. They hadn’t collected this data in a while. They got the World Cup coming up … They had to do tons of improvements. So we were able to map out the entire city just a matter of a couple of weeks and give them tons of comprehensive information on their pavements and on their sidewalks,” Pelaez said.
Action News Jax asked Pelaez what his response is to people who may be skeptical of AI scanning their streets.
His response: “I know some people might think, ‘Oh, where are these cameras? What are they doing?’ We should acknowledge we’re automatically anonymizing people and license plates. None of that. We’re not storing any of that. All we care about is the condition of the roads.”
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We’ve asked the City of Jacksonville about its current plan of action for identifying road issues.
It told us it has a formal program with trained teams using instrumented vehicles to look at all city roads on a two-year cycle. Those teams rate the roads to prioritize which need attention.
The City of Jacksonville confirmed it has met with Cyvl representatives to discuss the tech’s applications. As of early February, COJ said Public Works is exploring a similar service with another vendor and does not anticipate any additional follow up with Cyvl.
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