In order to help contractors and private residents avoid existing utility lines (including gas, electrical, and water lines) when digging, the Chicago Department of Transportation maintains 811 Chicago, a free, 24-hour service to private contractors and homeowners in Chicago. Anyone planning to dig within Chicago must obtain a “dig ticket” from 811 Chicago. 811 Chicago notifies all utilities of the impending excavations. The utility owners then send out staff to mark the location of the underground facilities within 48 hours (excluding emergencies), not counting Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays.

This dataset shows these utility notifications. Since it is common for the same dig ticket to produce multiple notifications, the same dig ticket will appear multiple times and this dataset cannot be used without further refinement to count, map, or analyze unique excavations in Chicago.

See https://ipi.cityofchicago.org/Digger for more information on the dig ticket system.

In order to help contractors and private residents avoid existing utility lines (including gas, electrical, and water lines) when digging, the Chicago Department of Transportation maintains 811 Chicago, a free, 24-hour service to private contractors and homeowners in Chicago. Anyone planning to dig within Chicago must obtain a “dig ticket” from 811 Chicago. 811 Chicago notifies all utilities of the impending excavations. The utility owners then send out staff to mark the location of the underground facilities within 48 hours (excluding emergencies), not counting Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays.

The dataset on which this filtered view is based shows these utility notifications. Since it is common for the same dig ticket to produce multiple notifications, the same dig ticket will appear multiple times and the dataset cannot be used without further refinement to count, map, or analyze unique excavations in Chicago.

This filtered view shows only the columns that should remain constant for a dig ticket and de-duplicates them, Therefore, it should represent a unique list of dig tickets. Because of the technique used, while it is possible to show the LATITUDE and LONGITUDE columns, it is not possible to show the LOCATION column and therefore not possible to create map views directly from this filtered view within the data portal software.

See https://ipi.cityofchicago.org/Digger for more information on the dig ticket system.

Map of 811 Chicago Utility Hit Tickets

In order to help contractors and private residents avoid existing utility lines (including gas, electrical, and water lines) when digging, the Chicago Department of Transportation maintains 811 Chicago, a free, 24-hour service to private contractors and homeowners in Chicago. Anyone planning to dig within Chicago must obtain a “dig ticket” from 811 Chicago. 811 Chicago notifies all utilities of the impending excavations. The utility owners then send out staff to mark the location of the underground facilities within 48 hours (excluding emergencies), not counting Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays.

The dataset on which this filtered view is based shows these utility notifications. Since it is common for the same dig ticket to produce multiple notifications, the same dig ticket will appear multiple times and the dataset cannot be used without further refinement to count, map, or analyze unique excavations in Chicago.

This filtered view shows only the most recent notification for each utility. It, therefore, removes some of the duplication in the dataset but still will produce multiple records per dig ticket if multiple utilities have been notified.

See https://ipi.cityofchicago.org/Digger for more information on the dig ticket system.

Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT), Division of Infrastructure Management (DIM), operates Chicago’s “One Call” service—known as “811 Chicago.” Per Municipal Code of Chicago (MCC) § 10-21-080, “in the event of damage to any underground facilities, the person responsible for the damage shall immediately notify…811 Chicago.”

811 Chicago records all reported damages as “hit tickets.” This dataset contains hit tickets since January 1, 2020. (Prior to that date, hit tickets data is a less reliable measure of utility damages.)

Please note, a hit ticket does not necessarily mean damage occurred or implicate the parties listed on the hit ticket as having caused the damage. For example, an excavator may report damage they discovered, but did not cause; an entity may incorrectly report the utility that was damaged or who caused the damage; the same damage may be reported by more than one entity. 811 Chicago investigates all reported damages to determine if there was a violation of MCC § 10-21. During the course of its investigation, 811 Chicago will confirm the information on the hit ticket. If 811 Chicago discovers inaccurate information, it may not update the hit ticket. The data related to 811 Chicago’s investigation is not exposed in this data set. Importantly, 811 Chicago does not determine which entity is liable for the damage, and the “hit by” field does not indicate that the individual or entity caused the damage or violated MCC § 10-21.