Officials may need to determine what caused the damage.
They may need to identify which agency is responsible.
They may need to inspect underground infrastructure.
They may need to coordinate with utility providers.
They may need to determine the safest way to close or partially close a road while work takes place.
And they may have to schedule crews and equipment around other projects.
Jacksonville also has an additional complication: not every roadway falls under exactly the same maintenance responsibility.
The city explains that Public Works maintains roads that have been formally accepted for maintenance by the city or the former Duval County government. Some rights-of-way may be open for public access without having been accepted for city maintenance.
There are also roads under the responsibility of other agencies.
That means the question "Why hasn't the city fixed this?" can sometimes be more complicated than it appears.
The first question may actually be:
"Who is responsible for fixing it?"
That distinction matters because residents naturally experience roads as part of one continuous transportation system.
A driver does not necessarily care whether a particular section belongs to the city, the state or another authority.
They simply know that they are driving down the road.
When something goes wrong, they want it fixed.
That is completely understandable.
But the administrative process behind the repair can be considerably more complicated than the problem looks from behind a steering wheel.
This is also why the banana tree was such an effective symbol.
It stripped away all that complexity.
The tree didn't care which agency was responsible.
It didn't care about maintenance boundaries.
It didn't care about engineering inspections.
It simply sat there.
Right in the hole.
And because it was so absurd, it made people notice the problem before they had to understand the bureaucracy surrounding it.
Chapter 4: Jacksonville's Huge Road-Maintenance Challenge
The banana tree story becomes even more interesting when viewed against the scale of Jacksonville itself.
Jacksonville is not dealing with a handful of neighborhood streets.
The city's Right of Way and Stormwater Maintenance Division says it maintains more than 3,854 miles of paved roads, along with approximately four miles of unpaved roads.
That is an enormous amount of infrastructure.
Maintaining thousands of miles of roadway is a continuous process.
Roads deteriorate.
Weather affects pavement.
Heavy traffic creates wear.
Water can penetrate cracks.
Drainage problems can weaken road surfaces.
Construction can affect surrounding infrastructure.
And underground utility problems can sometimes create damage from below.
Even when a city repairs one section of pavement, another section somewhere else may require attention.
Jacksonville's official roadway-maintenance information acknowledges that the need to maintain city streets never ends.
The city's 2025–2026 budget included more than $22.5 million for roadway resurfacing. The city also uses techniques beyond simply placing new asphalt, including micro-surfacing and rejuvenation treatments intended to extend the useful life of road surfaces.
These figures provide important context for the banana-tree story.
A resident sees one pothole.
A city sees thousands of miles of infrastructure.
Both perspectives are real.
For the resident driving over the same damaged section every day, one pothole can feel like the most important road problem in the city.
For a public works department responsible for an enormous network, that same pothole is one item among a much larger collection of maintenance needs.
That difference in perspective can create frustration on both sides.
Residents want visible problems addressed quickly.
Public agencies have to prioritize work across a large system.