What is 311 in Boston?

Here's everything to know about the city's hub for reporting non-emergency issues.

An exterior shot of Boston City Hall. Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff

February 21, 2024

4 minutes to read

Need to report something related to city services but don’t know who to call? There’s an app, a hotline, and a website for that. And if you’re really in a rush, you can even send out a message via X, formerly known as Twitter.

311 is Boston’s around-the-clock constituent services line that allows people to report non-emergent issues. Think: graffiti removal, broken traffic signals, tree planting, pest control, and more. The center is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year, according to their website.

“We’re here for all types of city services, whether that’s an actual service request that’s related to broken sidewalks or street lights not functioning properly, to also answering questions on paying your excise tax,” said Irgisola Budo, director of 311.

What is 311 and how do you use it?

311 helps with more than just potholes. Service requests can be filed for a variety of problems, such as needle cleanup, graffiti removal, broken street signs and traffic signals, and more. They also offer multiple online services unrelated to cleanups and fixits.

NEIGHBORHOODS

As of November 2022, the city no longer picks up discarded mattresses during weekly trash days. Appointments can be scheduled through 311 to have the mattress picked up and recycled.

The newest version of the app allows users to file non-emergency reports in 12 different languages: English, Spanish, Somali, Haitian Creole, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, French, Cape Verdean Creole, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Standard Arabic, and Vietnamese.

To use the 311 app in any of these languages, users must set the phone itself to that language, according to Budo.

However, the language options don’t stop there.

“We have access to 381 languages,” Budo said. “If someone wants to call in, we have an interpretation line that we can connect with to make sure we can accurately get the information from constituents.”

311 services are accessible through many means. Users can download the official app, message @BOS311 on X, file a report online, or simply dial 3-1-1.

How it became a tool to ’empower residents’

The idea of implementing a city services hotline really began in Baltimore, Maryland in 1996, according to Dan O’Brien, a professor of public policy and urban affairs and criminology and criminal justice at Northeastern University. The goal was to divert non-emergency calls away from 911.

“311 was created because Baltimore was a very high-crime city at the time. The 911 system basically said, ‘We can’t handle calls about graffiti and abandoned buildings. Someone else needs to take these calls. We have too much else going on,’” O’Brien said. “And so they invented a new hotline for non-emergency services…what they eventually started to realize was it was starting to make those other services more efficient and effective because you then knew where all the graffiti was, where streetlight outages were, where potholes were.”

A 24-hour hotline for non-emergency services (formerly known as the Mayor’s Hotline) has existed in Boston for decades, according to the city’s website. In 2009, during the tenure of the late mayor Thomas Menino, the city launched Citizens Connect, the first version of the 311 app that sought to “empower residents to help take care of their communities,” in response to the new popularity of smartphones.

In 2015, Boston converted from the Mayor’s Hotline and Citizens Connect to 311, already a nationwide service. With this, the app rebranded to BOS:311 and the phone number became just three digits long.

“[Menino] just cared about taking care of the basic stuff that city services are responsible for,” O’Brien said. “In the 311 system, he saw as a real way to…make it more effective, make it more efficient and give communities the opportunity to be a part of that process and to really advocate in that process. There was a certain kind of empowering of civicness that he and his staff saw in the implementation of 311.”

Why it’s a ‘collaboration between community and government’

Some of 311’s most notable reports have been about Boston’s animal populations — the ones that exist and the ones that don’t — and each is taken seriously. In December, 311 received several reports about goats roaming the city, except the photos received appeared to be photoshopped or generated with artificial intelligence.

Despite receiving interesting calls at times, from injured pigeons in Downtown Boston to a pair of sheep causing a low-speed chase in South Boston, each and every 311 report receives the same amount of attention.

“We take everything seriously. We can’t just pretend, like, ‘Oh, that’s probably fake.’ We have to make sure someone still goes out to see what’s going on out there,” Budo said.

For O’Brien, maintenance of the urban commons — fixing issues such as graffiti and potholes that are “all of our problem, but none of our responsibility” — has been a reward of the 311 system.

“I think 311 really acknowledged that the maintenance of the urban commons can and should be collaboration between community and government,” he said. “And that requires government making itself accessible and making itself transparent.”

To that end, the work of 311 is made publicly available through data sets and a live feed of both open and closed service tickets.

With 311, people are able better connect with representatives at City Hall to report non-emergencies and help in the allocation of resources to where they are needed most.

“As many city workers as there are, we’re not on the ground walking every neighborhood and every street, so we don’t know exactly what’s going on unless constituents that are commuting and walking the streets call in and report those matters to us,” Budo said. “When you have over 800 square miles of roads, it’s helpful for constituents to call in those matters to make sure that we have it.”