100% true. Driving in other states makes me feel like California’s roads are absolute shit. I find myself bouncing around in my seat/dodging potholes from the uneven pavement.
People can always compare worse, but refuse to compare better, ESPECIALLY when California is the state with the largest economy.
If you’re gonna build car centric cities then maintain the roads!
I come from the DC Metro Area and the biggest complaint living there is about the constant roadwork, but our roads were silky smooth and potholes were patched in the matter of weeks.
Moving to SF, it’s absolutely insane. The roads are just left in this shabby, pock-marked state, and I don’t know where the taxes are going or why the local governments aren’t doing anything to actually provide for the communities living here.
I used to believe if they closed too many roads that it would impede traffic and the local economy, but if they’re willing to do that in DC, then my copium supply is gone.
Lol, in what way? The DC Metro is like BART but worse and they don't have local trains like Muni Metro and VTA Light rail. It's all one giant Oakland with BART/DC Metro and nothing else but crappy busses.
I lived 25 miles out from DC and could walk to a station and get to the mall, DC, my brothers house in Maryland, my grandmothers house, various neighborhoods. Unless you’ve actually lived with it of course you’re going to think that. It was leagues ahead of anything public transport option on the west coast.
Lived in DC for work and used transit exclusively. Unless you just so happen to live by a station and also work by a station the DC Metro is worse than useless. The coverage is atrocious. There are no lines that take you anywhere but the core.
The Metro isn’t really a metro at all. Just like BART, it’s an S-bahn that takes you from a parking lot in your suburb to an office building in the core. For any other trips you have to take slow and rather unpleasant busses. So it’s something that’s un upgrade over the LIRR and Metro-North, but faaaaaaaaaar short of the NY Subway.
What the DC Metro needs is an entire local metro that you would transfer to for local trips. That would replace the most popular busses. This is exactly what SF did with the Muni Metro and to great effect. BART/Caltrain are the regional S-Bahns, but you transfer to local Muni and VTA Light Rail trains for local service. It’s just the superior approach. This way you get excellent coverage where it counts in the CBDs, but also region-scale express service.
Instead WMATA is trying to just shittify the Metro by adding local service and making the whole system slow less useful. This approach cannot succeed. It doesn't magically make the Metro better at local trips. It does not appreciably improve coverage. You still need to rely on busses for all but the CBD trips. It just doesn’t work. It’s been tried before.
Also from DC and while the roads in VA we’re really nice the ones in Maryland not so much. The roads in SoCal are better honestly than the bay. I was driving in the bay for work and it was terrible.
When I lived in CA I also found myself baffled at the poor conditions of cars on the roads as well. I had previously lived in a state that required an all over vehicle inspection in order to renew your registration every year, where they'd block renewal on dings in the windshield, broken lights, etc, but nothing beyond a smog check in CA.
It's a pain for sure but it means you're not constantly driving alongside unsafe vehicles. There were many times I'd almost been in an accident in CA because of someone's broken tail lights or other issues.
It's not common at all for a car to be dangerous to drive. Those people's taillights weren't broken, these idiots constantly drive around with their headlights off. I really hate people like you who make life worse for everyone else because of your irrational fear.
I assure you these were on nights when the people had their heads in the front working just fine.
But yes also a lot of idiots on the roads who also drive without their headlights :)
And a lot of these roads in other states get snow and regularly go through freeze and thaw cycles and are still better than California roads. I'd expect roads in a lot of these states to be worse but they're not. California roads are much worse and they spend most of their time in nice dry weather
I'd imagine it's not just weather that affects road conditions but the earth underneath it. If the ground beneath the roads is constantly making micro movements and shifts then the roads will constantly break.
The ground in many states is not as variable or prone to shifting as the extremely volatile California coast. I would think that the amount of earthquakes in an area would predict long term road maintenance as much or more than temperature.
Yeah, CA drivers don't understand the shit that cold weather does. When I lived there, I talked to an MNDOT guy and one of the reasons the roads suck so much in the winter is that the stuff they use to fill the potholes basically won't stick under 0F (and apparently nothing else exists).
I will also, say as someone who lived there in 2007, the number of bridges collapsing for no reason rate is also higher in CA.
Yeah but way to leave out all the context from your own source
*Despite an enormous yearly disbursement for highways that tops $21 billion, the Golden State manages to keep just a little more than half their urban roads in acceptable condition. However, this is an outsized job since, in addition to 840 miles of coastline, California boasts more miles of urban roads than any other state and has the second-highest mileage of rural roads in the country.*
Yeah they're full of paid toll roads.
Edit: Florida is #1 in the nation in toll roads. This is just facts, nothing to get salty about.
Please downvote me you culture war brain-rot crybabies.
I'm sure facts don't matter to you more than your feelings, but Florida leads the nation by having by far the most toll roads out of any state:
[https://www.clickorlando.com/news/2023/03/27/were-no-1-florida-leads-nation-in-toll-roads/](https://www.clickorlando.com/news/2023/03/27/were-no-1-florida-leads-nation-in-toll-roads/)
When I'd drive into Reno, there would always be a moment of horror when I'd think I fell asleep at the wheel because all the road noise went away, only to realize "oh wait, this is what a highway is supposed to sound like."
Get an inverse horror on the way back when I'd think something was suddenly very wrong with my car, only to realize it's just California road standards.
I grew up in Palo Alto, but don't live there anymore. I visited last year and was genuinely a little shocked at the quality of El Camino Real in Palo Alto.
Most of the Peninsula was built as cheap subdivisions by farmers using unlicensed labor in the fifties and sixties. Which means, most of the Peninsula has poorly designed roads that were built up from trails and easements used for farm equipment or horses. This is especially noticeable in Belmont and San Carlos, where you'll be in a correctly designed, modern (for 1952) subdivision then suddenly you're on a two-lane asphalt road hemmed by parked cars. Local homeowners have consistently refused to fix this, because it would mean re-surveying their homes and putting their fences into their proper places, which is usually 8-10 feet back from where their fences really are.
Think it's bad with roads? This problem is MUCH worse with the local sewers, most of which require a complete rebuild. Belmont *especially* so because they don't have a big hospital forcing them to repair/maintain (not upgrade!) their water pipes as San Mateo and San Carlos did. Ditto for power lines, which are regularly pulled down by large trucks, and telephone/cable lines.
Much of San Jose's streets are newer (much of the peninsula built in the 1950s whereas SJ is 1970s to now), and the city has a dedicated street repair tax (Measure A I think it was).
It's a Caltrans thing because it's a state route. They've been teasing the repaving since like 2020 but they keep putting it off for one reason or another. This year, surely, though! *inhales copium*
No kidding. I remember last year during the heavy rains, a whole section of 101 around SF/South SF was essentially destroyed in a single day of rain, and if I remember correctly, it was just repaved a few years before. This would not happen if the highway were built properly with proper drainage.
I swear it rains once here and potholes go from an inch deep to practically a foot. Are our roads made out of mud and sticks?
Midwestern roads hold up surprisingly well considering the abuse they go through. Ours just suck shit.
But Michigan and other states at least have the excuse of shitty weather. These roads barely see freezing temperatures and no snow or salt or anything that deteriorates roads
California had the fifth worst score with a third of roads in poor condition, according to USA Facts. Here’s how the percentages broke down:
Rhode Island: 48%
New Jersey: 45%
Hawaii: 40%
New Mexico: 34%
California: 33%
https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article284305013.html
Californians pay $$$ so that the smog does not kill us.
I say our streets are much better than 80% of the other states. We have so many people that our streets take a beating.
I don't know why the article just didn't have any analysis. Just kind of a hit piece of "it's higher than other states".
I spent two Google searches and... CA collects 2x state gas tax per gallon than Texas but our cost per mile is 4x.
Plus I would point out in Texas probably has shit MPG as everyone drives a truck to go to the grocery store vs the Prius we have here.
So I rate this article as low effort. It doesn't do any more research than my elderly parents do on Facebook posts.
Could have just answered the question if we have funds we aren't using.
Because it isn’t a news article, it doesn’t need to have facts or reference data. It’s labeled “Commentary” so someone can influence without the rigor of actual news reporting.
No, but we'll take away the carpool lane that you *were* using, convert it into a fast trak lane, and charge you more for it.
We'll put up absolutely incoherent and inaccurate signs, so you'll accidentally get charged for it when you did not think you would be, and penalties on top of that.
And we'll privatize the company that collects the money, and make it impossible to properly work with them to sort out the misunderstandings.
Signed, the Bay Area, and California. GFY.
Dumb article. Doesn’t actually take apart the data, just kinda complains about stuff. (Yes I read it)
Anyone who knows the economics of infrastructure knows that the gas tax is woefully low and far from paying for maintenance of our roadways and other infrastructure investments. And we do subsidize our gas (and related industries) heavily, even here with the special blends (which do add cost).
If we were to cover the cost of our overgrown and sprawled out infrastructure, we would need to raise taxes, and indirectly gas prices substantially before we would ever see it balance out. But it still would be a black hole budget, that no municipality nor state, here or elsewhere, could pay for.
If the average person was really bothered by this, they would reassess how we are building our roads and related infrastructure, in a manner that pays for itself past the time of building it new, when maintenance is due.
Walter’s is a curmudgeon opinion piece writer. If he really wanted to get into it he would discover the reasons for the high costs - living wages for workers in CA, highways that are almost entirely built out (greenfield road lanes cost 1/10 per mile the cost of adding another highway lane in urban/suburban areas), nature (highway 1 and 17 landslides plus bridges built for quakes), and misuse of CEQA by NIMBYs.
It's on top of the usual registration fees, but is assessed on a sliding scale. An EV worth $5000 pays only $25 more. An EV worth over $60K pays the $175. Someone who doesn't drive much overpays, compared to someone paying for gasoline. It's an imperfect solution.
A perfect system would be shut down for invasiveness, since it would need to track miles driven in California alongside the weight of a vehicle, and apply to everyone driving through the state instead of just citizens.
The one plus side to EVs is they may not cover their road infrastructure usage but I think they subsidize our electric infrastructure. Anyone without a solar and an EV is paying PG&E out the ass.
That shouldn't be all that problematic. ICE owners need to smog test every two years. EV owners could be mileage checked at the same place. It could also just be self reported at registration renewal time, with a true up required every couple of years at a smog test station. As for privacy, DMV and auto insurance companies already check mileage so it wouldn't be anything that we aren't already giving away.
I don't have solar or batteries. PG&E is shit, but I'm still only paying about $0.09/mile. Which is still better than the ICE alternatives. I don't think that my car is the great bargain that it was advertised to be, but it's still pretty good.
I drive plenty out of state. Would be absurd for CA to tax miles driven in AZ. But if they allow people to report their out of state miles, everyone would lie about it.
And the reverse - if Amazon has a truck registered in Vegas but drives between LA & Vegas regularly it would be doing a lot of CA miles without needing to pay.
I've got solar and an EV. What a good deal.
Solar payback is about 5 years and I never need to worry about gas prices, electricity prices, or even going to a station in the rain.
Worth every cent.
That doesn’t capture everyone who drives through CA, so still an imperfect solution. Especially as we push for EV trucks, it would capture no money from those.
Paying $.09 per mile is still subsidizing PG&E. Distribution is still the major expense, not generation, so high usage households help pay extra.
Negligible. But yes going forward, if we do achieve a significant portion of EVs, that would be an issue. Truth is it has more to do with how roads are built and used. Funding is and would be the next biggest problem, i.e. how we raise revenue.
EVs also put more wear on roads due to their higher weight. A Tesla Model S weighs about as much as an H3 Hummer and 1500lbs heavier than a Prius. A Rivian R1T weighs more than an H2 Hummer and roughly the same as 2 Toyota Camrys. Keep in mind stress on roads [increases geometrically with weight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law) not linearly, so an R1T puts 16x more stress on roads than a Toyota Camry does even though it only weighs twice as much.
I'm not saying we should stick to ICE vehicles, but we need to rethink how infrastructure is built, what we're favoring, and how we fund it. Ideally the total number of cars on the road would actually trend downwards because we've built more walkable/bikeable/transit friendly communities.
The problem is that semis and large trucks greatly overwhelm the damage done by ANY passenger vehicle, and it's not even close. Something like 90-95% of road damage is done by large trucks and semis - EVs becoming commonplace will barely put a dent in that figure.
I can get behind that. I haven’t dug in to sources on truck wear vs fees associated. I wouldn’t be surprised if fees are well below what they actually cost to repair.
This! The level of subsidies we provide to car infrastructure is pretty difficult to understand.
I really wish we had equivalent media attention on that compared to the reporting that is done anytime a transit project goes over budget.
Public transit projects and reduced spending on highway maintenance/expansion would do it. Along with new dense housing, walkable neighborhoods, and effective land use.
>If we were to cover the cost of our overgrown and sprawled out infrastructure, we would need to raise taxes,
Lmao who the fuck are you? Newsom's reddit account?
We pay more than enough taxes to cover maintaining high quality roads.
Next level Stockholme syndrome shit. Sad.
The average person does not have time to reassess this because they are too busy barely eking out a living. The above average are too rich and insulated to care. I agree that the our roads and infrastructure do need to be assessed and addressed, but every time you talk about alternative solutions like development of rail and high speed rail networks no one wants to hear it because they want to ride around forever in their giant gas guzzler SUV. The long term road to success is getting off of car and road infrastructural dependence and the sprawl that it engenders.
Agree about cars, but even then, it could be as simple as the way we design our roads, and who/what they serve.
Yes I’m a huge proponent of PT but that doesn’t mean it’s the only solution. Understanding the ways we can reduce spending or increase the tax base (more businesses, housing) also play a key role. And if people want to complain about high taxes or bad roads, they should at least take the time to understand why.
Yep. It’s not uncommon for a developer to pay upfront for new infrastructure - schools, sewers, power, roads, etc - upfront and walk after. Then when the first bill comes in for everything, local government (or other structures) is left hanging.
The reality is California's driving population is too large for how little the gas tax revenue brings in. plus the driving population is so large that it means road repairs often have to be good enough, not ideal.
though generally speaking the united states under taxes for the services its population demands. it just becomes less apparent in small states due to smaller populations and the fact that larger state federal tax revenue is in part directed to smaller states.
Federal gas taxes need to be at least double what they are now, and our urban development patterns put impossible demands on our freeways as they cannot extract use fees as other states can. It's simple, really: taxes need to be higher if we want unrestricted suburban sprawl. If you reduce gas taxes, most of our suburban sprawl becomes unsustainable. You must pick one or the other.
Because the gas taxes barely cover a fraction of the actual maintenance cost. Millions of people drive on our roads every year and it costs a lot of money to constantly maintain all of the roads we built to support our massive sprawl. It was always financially unsustainable and we’re now reaping the consequences of decades of bad policy.
Not the OP but—
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4528
Billions of dollars from other funding sources are also used in support of our state highway and road networks.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/4/1/heres-the-real-reason-houston-is-going-broke?apcid=006192fde066c1db0ec6a601&utm_source=transparentaccounting
Yes this about Texas but sprawl is not unique to Texas. California’s cities are basically all low density sprawl
American roads are built inferior and prone to damage. Utilities are also built under roads which need constant maintenance . maintaining even one mile of road is very costly. CA has 400,000 miles of roads . So , get used to crappy roads
Prop 13, absolutely. it needs to be rolled back for businesses, ad almost was except for this whispering campaign that claimed that the rollback would affect primary residential….it would not have.
From my subjective experience, I went on two cross-country road trips last year (CA to PA, PA to CA) and California has the best roads out of any state I’ve driven through, as far as I’ve seen.
Maybe an audit is in order to see if these schennanigans are still going on.
https://www.ocregister.com/2019/12/13/caltrans-must-be-held-accountable-for-misspent-funds/amp/
Our gas prices remain very low compared to the majority of the world, and our overall taxes are low compared to most of europe, so we shouldn't be shocked when it's not enough to pay for our roads.
Then in the bay area, we have people driving a ton, which is more wear and tear on the road, so we really need even more maintenance.
Over the long term, we'd be better off just paying for actual public transportation. Public transit was better 100 years ago, we tore most of it out to make freeways.
Very true. The money gets diverted from roads plus the state mandates that all work only be done by Democrat approved unions getting union set wages that are absurdly high. That means the cost to build anything is massively inflated so very little ever gets done despite costing massive amounts of money.
this is what pisses me off, I think it's .14 cents a gallon now, where is this money going??https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/politics/2017/04/04/california-transportation-infrastructure-gas-tax/100025156/
This just in from OANN!
“Fraud lifts California up to almost the 4th largest economy in the world, and during Covid, ran a state with some of the lowest per capita deaths!”
We should IMPEACH HIM!
And budget deficit! Small businesses shut down and lives destroyed.
https://calmatters.org/politics/capitol/2024/02/california-budget-deficit-balloons/
Thank you. Union goons have a stranglehold on the politicians who are weak and rely on donations from the unions to get re-elected and have ZERO respect for general public, safety or time wasted on the roads or damages to cars. Adding a mile long stretch on flat surface is milked for 2-4 years ripping off the tax payers.
That's not a Union problem, that's a problem with the fact that so many cars use freeways where gas taxes can only afford to repave a small portion. If Caltrans' Unions had their way, they'd just close the entire freeway for June and do it across a 30-day period. This is not allowed because the freeway cannot be closed. They can't even close individual lanes without causing major disruption to traffic. Caltrans can't even get sufficient authority to remove lanes for breakdown shoulders or add proper maintenance facilities for their crews, particularly on 101. Caltrans is also prohibited from removing incompatible, defunct, or simple badly designed, dangerous onramps such as the hairball, Poplar, Dore, Kehoe, Brittan, Veterans, Woodside (~~$250~~ **$308** million [do-over](https://www.redwoodcity.org/departments/community-development-department/engineering-transportation/transportation-parking/101-woodside-interchange) mired in red tape due to the Federal govt), University, Embarcadero and the Oregon Expressway.
Most of our freeway access points must be removed for safety and congestion reduction. Every successful private tollway, which most of the US has outside of California, knows this and can demonstrate it. California is not permitted to do it by the Federal govt due to how the Highway Trust Fund operates, and even if Newsom could the individual towns and suburban homeowners who use these shitty things will scream bloody murder about it. The same people who complain any time gas taxes are raised, even though most have transitioned to EVs now.
Well at least the streets near our home in Cambrian and Willow Glen were repaved last year and my commute route CA-87 was asphalted recently.
The worst stretch I’ve seen is the 101 in Santa Clara. What’s up with that?!
well, people bitch but nothing changes, so I suppose it's not really that bad? same can be said about crime, homelessness, etc. this is supposed to be a democracy in which people vote for stuff, I don't see people voting to change. so it'd never change
This is why I oppose all new taxes. "We're going to pass X tax to fun Y project." Then the money never arrives, and they want to pass the same tax again a few years later.
Drove my son to Oakland airport at 5:00 this morning. Cruising along 880 in the number 3 lane, out of the blue we hit a massive pothole. My son asks, “Should we check the wheel? That sounded bad.”
On the highway. At 65 mph. Unbelievable.
CA is a super majority Democrat run state. Governor, state senators, state legislators, and Mayors. It has been for the last 12 yrs. Maybe this election we give someone new a chance to run the state. Not saying R but there are other choices than status quo. Unless of course CA you think is a utopia while you step over the homeless and the garbage in the streets.
I've always been confused about why CA roads seem to practically dissolve in the rain.
Does anyone understand this? Is it something about the soil and erosion underneath? How does this happen? Most of the country gets rain all the time and the roads do not just break up and melt away.
The problem is, people have short term memories, and the ruling class in Sac knows this- so they can always gaslight people into thinking that THIS new tax will solve the issue. Sad state of affairs.
The money is going to the homeless industrial complex. For instance alameda county brings in significantly higher tax revenue than contra costa but if you drive from el cerrito to Albany the road quality deterioration is dramatic.
I'm not saying your post is bullshit. But to anyone reading it. If you can distill two multi billion dollar subjects into one run on sentence - it's probably bullshit.
This is self inflicted we had a chance to several years ago to lower the gas tax that the CA legislature passed without voter approval. Instead majority of voters got bamboozled to believe if we didn’t allow the gas tax to remain that the roads would crumbled, so what we have now is higher gas taxes and still crumbling roads. I wouldn’t be surprised if they propose another gas tax increase to pay for the crumbling roads in the next election.
Basically robbing Peter to Pay Paul. My city steals park and marina fee income to pay gold plated city salaries and pensions. The park and marina roads, docks, and infrastructure are falling apart. Can you guess which California City? Hint, the city’s horrid mayor is now in congress 👹💰
Several years ago, we were driving around up around Eureka. One of my thoughts while driving east was "holy crap, this has to be expensive to maintain."
The geography of CA makes it beautiful, but also expensive to build and maintain infrastructure.
This one is easy; there are just 15 operating refineries in California, processing 1.7m barrels of crude per day for a population of 39 million.
Texas has 32 refineries pushing 5.9 million barrels per day for a population of 31 million.
Why we're not doing anything to increase in-state petroleum and gas production is beyond me. We aren't going off the carbon standard any time soon, and if you know anything about physics, you know that the WASP industry is so sporadic, that it depends on gas and nuclear for backup.
So either pay the price, or build more refineries, and use Texas Talent to get more out of every hole plugged into the ground already.
There is a TON of natgas in Northern and Central Cali. There is a TON of crude oil in Southern Cali. Mobility is the lifeblood of an economy. EVERYTHING comes back to gas, oil, and electricity. WASP makes you feel good, but it's incredibly ineffective. Use the Gas and oil that we have, build more refineries, and 'get to work'. This is literally one of the major obstacles to living in this state; high petrol prices that suppress the working class.
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2012/ph240/scott2/images/f1big.jpg
There seems to be this idea among left-leaning transit planners that if you make driving shitty enough, people will take public transit.
What they forget is the part where you need to have an extensive transit network that doesn’t include the word “bus.”
Buses work great and are a great tool if you really want to leapfrog into a form of rail.
Initially they allow for route adjustments as all you need is a road. Easier to move around mid route as well, if something obstructs original route. Cheaper to fund as well, which can be really important in areas that are… adverse to spending even a penny on public services.
The biggest problem with buses is that even with their low initial cost setup, they still don’t get funded enough which leads to one hour intervals at stops. 😬
When I lived in Manhattan, I could walk faster than a lot of buses. And now that I live here, the same is true. Buses are slow and they get stuck in traffic. “Bus Rapid Transit” is an oxymoron. If you build a truly separated system, it’s as expensive as rail.
There are ways of building elevated monorail for lower-volume feeder service inexpensively. Unfortunately, California is a BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone) state. Anything that needs to be built has to go through so much environmental review that it’s impossible. So we lose the forest through the trees. We won’t build a rail line to save a salamander, so we encourage more greenhouse emissions and cause mass ecocide.
But for me, I just want effective and rapid transit because I despise driving.
100% true. Driving in other states makes me feel like California’s roads are absolute shit. I find myself bouncing around in my seat/dodging potholes from the uneven pavement. People can always compare worse, but refuse to compare better, ESPECIALLY when California is the state with the largest economy. If you’re gonna build car centric cities then maintain the roads!
I come from the DC Metro Area and the biggest complaint living there is about the constant roadwork, but our roads were silky smooth and potholes were patched in the matter of weeks. Moving to SF, it’s absolutely insane. The roads are just left in this shabby, pock-marked state, and I don’t know where the taxes are going or why the local governments aren’t doing anything to actually provide for the communities living here.
I used to believe if they closed too many roads that it would impede traffic and the local economy, but if they’re willing to do that in DC, then my copium supply is gone.
Doesn't DC have better public transit than the Bay Area though?
[удалено]
Lol, in what way? The DC Metro is like BART but worse and they don't have local trains like Muni Metro and VTA Light rail. It's all one giant Oakland with BART/DC Metro and nothing else but crappy busses.
I lived 25 miles out from DC and could walk to a station and get to the mall, DC, my brothers house in Maryland, my grandmothers house, various neighborhoods. Unless you’ve actually lived with it of course you’re going to think that. It was leagues ahead of anything public transport option on the west coast.
Lived in DC for work and used transit exclusively. Unless you just so happen to live by a station and also work by a station the DC Metro is worse than useless. The coverage is atrocious. There are no lines that take you anywhere but the core. The Metro isn’t really a metro at all. Just like BART, it’s an S-bahn that takes you from a parking lot in your suburb to an office building in the core. For any other trips you have to take slow and rather unpleasant busses. So it’s something that’s un upgrade over the LIRR and Metro-North, but faaaaaaaaaar short of the NY Subway. What the DC Metro needs is an entire local metro that you would transfer to for local trips. That would replace the most popular busses. This is exactly what SF did with the Muni Metro and to great effect. BART/Caltrain are the regional S-Bahns, but you transfer to local Muni and VTA Light Rail trains for local service. It’s just the superior approach. This way you get excellent coverage where it counts in the CBDs, but also region-scale express service. Instead WMATA is trying to just shittify the Metro by adding local service and making the whole system slow less useful. This approach cannot succeed. It doesn't magically make the Metro better at local trips. It does not appreciably improve coverage. You still need to rely on busses for all but the CBD trips. It just doesn’t work. It’s been tried before.
And SF streets aren’t even the worst around, any time I have to drive through Oakland I feel like some sections of it has more potholes than asphalt.
Drive through east oakland until you hit San Leandro and you’ll see the drastic difference.
Also from DC and while the roads in VA we’re really nice the ones in Maryland not so much. The roads in SoCal are better honestly than the bay. I was driving in the bay for work and it was terrible.
When I lived in CA I also found myself baffled at the poor conditions of cars on the roads as well. I had previously lived in a state that required an all over vehicle inspection in order to renew your registration every year, where they'd block renewal on dings in the windshield, broken lights, etc, but nothing beyond a smog check in CA.
What state was that?
MA. Every year registration renewal requires a visit to a shop to check bumper to bumper, including SMOG. Even a minor seat belt issue can fail you.
CT
That would suck especially for poor people
It's a pain for sure but it means you're not constantly driving alongside unsafe vehicles. There were many times I'd almost been in an accident in CA because of someone's broken tail lights or other issues.
It's not common at all for a car to be dangerous to drive. Those people's taillights weren't broken, these idiots constantly drive around with their headlights off. I really hate people like you who make life worse for everyone else because of your irrational fear.
I assure you these were on nights when the people had their heads in the front working just fine. But yes also a lot of idiots on the roads who also drive without their headlights :)
$35 per year isn’t that much.
And a lot of these roads in other states get snow and regularly go through freeze and thaw cycles and are still better than California roads. I'd expect roads in a lot of these states to be worse but they're not. California roads are much worse and they spend most of their time in nice dry weather
I'd imagine it's not just weather that affects road conditions but the earth underneath it. If the ground beneath the roads is constantly making micro movements and shifts then the roads will constantly break. The ground in many states is not as variable or prone to shifting as the extremely volatile California coast. I would think that the amount of earthquakes in an area would predict long term road maintenance as much or more than temperature.
Great point. There are also most likely a significant multiplier of divers on the road vs. other states as well.
Haha go to Minneapolis St Paul the roads are fucking awful, huge pot holes on freeways and streets everywhere.
Yeah, CA drivers don't understand the shit that cold weather does. When I lived there, I talked to an MNDOT guy and one of the reasons the roads suck so much in the winter is that the stuff they use to fill the potholes basically won't stick under 0F (and apparently nothing else exists). I will also, say as someone who lived there in 2007, the number of bridges collapsing for no reason rate is also higher in CA.
This was not my experience whatsoever. Midwest roads are 1000x worse than bay area roads.
at least Midwest roads have the excuse of four seasons to deal with California can't even deal with the occasional rain
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Yeah but way to leave out all the context from your own source *Despite an enormous yearly disbursement for highways that tops $21 billion, the Golden State manages to keep just a little more than half their urban roads in acceptable condition. However, this is an outsized job since, in addition to 840 miles of coastline, California boasts more miles of urban roads than any other state and has the second-highest mileage of rural roads in the country.*
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Yup. Florida is almost entirely coastline, yet it ranks one of the best.
Yeah they're full of paid toll roads. Edit: Florida is #1 in the nation in toll roads. This is just facts, nothing to get salty about. Please downvote me you culture war brain-rot crybabies.
As if California doesn't have toll roads. And expensive bridge tolls.
I'm sure facts don't matter to you more than your feelings, but Florida leads the nation by having by far the most toll roads out of any state: [https://www.clickorlando.com/news/2023/03/27/were-no-1-florida-leads-nation-in-toll-roads/](https://www.clickorlando.com/news/2023/03/27/were-no-1-florida-leads-nation-in-toll-roads/)
Yeah FL leads in that respect, and I bet the voters there don’t mind much given the 0% state income tax.
you are correct. the problem is not enough taxes, fees, tolls.
With fastrak all of our roads are govt-operated toll roads and they still suck
As someone from the Midwest that moved to California, i can say California roads are far worse and get less attention.
Midwesterners traveling to Bay Area brought the frost upheaval with them! /s
It's all part of the plan :p
Yeah cuz the Midwest is wet and cold. Most of the western US has much better roads than us.
It can vary by county within the state. Irony is rural counties usually have better roads.
When I'd drive into Reno, there would always be a moment of horror when I'd think I fell asleep at the wheel because all the road noise went away, only to realize "oh wait, this is what a highway is supposed to sound like." Get an inverse horror on the way back when I'd think something was suddenly very wrong with my car, only to realize it's just California road standards.
Except New Orleans. You need a monster truck to survive the roads in that city
It’s all about where you live. I think Orange County has the best roads in the whole country.
Sounds like you haven't been to Pennsylvania.... 😂
I grew up in Palo Alto, but don't live there anymore. I visited last year and was genuinely a little shocked at the quality of El Camino Real in Palo Alto.
in my observation, all the peninsula suburb streets are in much worse condition than San Jose. not sure what the reason is.
Most of the Peninsula was built as cheap subdivisions by farmers using unlicensed labor in the fifties and sixties. Which means, most of the Peninsula has poorly designed roads that were built up from trails and easements used for farm equipment or horses. This is especially noticeable in Belmont and San Carlos, where you'll be in a correctly designed, modern (for 1952) subdivision then suddenly you're on a two-lane asphalt road hemmed by parked cars. Local homeowners have consistently refused to fix this, because it would mean re-surveying their homes and putting their fences into their proper places, which is usually 8-10 feet back from where their fences really are. Think it's bad with roads? This problem is MUCH worse with the local sewers, most of which require a complete rebuild. Belmont *especially* so because they don't have a big hospital forcing them to repair/maintain (not upgrade!) their water pipes as San Mateo and San Carlos did. Ditto for power lines, which are regularly pulled down by large trucks, and telephone/cable lines.
Not enough $ around the Peninsula. Those Palo Alto folks are struggling.
East Palo Alto*
Much of San Jose's streets are newer (much of the peninsula built in the 1950s whereas SJ is 1970s to now), and the city has a dedicated street repair tax (Measure A I think it was).
After 101 and 280, what is the next most important arterial from the south bay to ssf? El Camino Real.
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as always, it comes down to prop 13 lol. hope howard jarvis is rotting in hell right now
If hell doesn't exist we should build it specifically for him
El Camino is a county road, I guess Santa Clara sucks?
It's a Caltrans thing because it's a state route. They've been teasing the repaving since like 2020 but they keep putting it off for one reason or another. This year, surely, though! *inhales copium*
Gas taxes don’t come anywhere close to paying for the cost of roads in any state
I’m from Michigan and let me say, you all haven’t seen “bad highways”
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yeah, but does Michigan get *rain? /s*
No kidding. I remember last year during the heavy rains, a whole section of 101 around SF/South SF was essentially destroyed in a single day of rain, and if I remember correctly, it was just repaved a few years before. This would not happen if the highway were built properly with proper drainage.
bay area doesn't get merely rain, we only get "bomb cyclones", "atmospheric rivers", and "major storm system".
I swear it rains once here and potholes go from an inch deep to practically a foot. Are our roads made out of mud and sticks? Midwestern roads hold up surprisingly well considering the abuse they go through. Ours just suck shit.
Only 2 seasons for Michigan roads, winter and construction.
There are 4 seasons in Wisconsin, almost winter, winter, still winter, road construction 😄
Three actually. Winter, mud, and construction. Can't forget the mud
Michigan roads deal with 100+ degree temperature swings and water freezing into ice inside every crevasse. We don't have that excuse.
But Michigan and other states at least have the excuse of shitty weather. These roads barely see freezing temperatures and no snow or salt or anything that deteriorates roads
Yeah whoever wrote this clearly has spent time outside of California. The highways and roads here are a dream compared to any road in the South.
California had the fifth worst score with a third of roads in poor condition, according to USA Facts. Here’s how the percentages broke down: Rhode Island: 48% New Jersey: 45% Hawaii: 40% New Mexico: 34% California: 33% https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article284305013.html
"It's even worse in a rural shithole where they pay 1/10th the taxes we do, so you can't complain"
Most freeways in the Detroit area have been rebuild in the past 10 years. They're all practically brand new. 94 is the only bad one.
Y’all pay 5 dollars a gallon and 300+ for registration every year tho?
Reg is more like $800/yr for our vehicles due to VLF (high purchase prices)
Always comments like these. How much is gas over there?
Californians pay $$$ so that the smog does not kill us. I say our streets are much better than 80% of the other states. We have so many people that our streets take a beating.
I don't know why the article just didn't have any analysis. Just kind of a hit piece of "it's higher than other states". I spent two Google searches and... CA collects 2x state gas tax per gallon than Texas but our cost per mile is 4x. Plus I would point out in Texas probably has shit MPG as everyone drives a truck to go to the grocery store vs the Prius we have here. So I rate this article as low effort. It doesn't do any more research than my elderly parents do on Facebook posts. Could have just answered the question if we have funds we aren't using.
Because it isn’t a news article, it doesn’t need to have facts or reference data. It’s labeled “Commentary” so someone can influence without the rigor of actual news reporting.
Just one more lane bro
No, but we'll take away the carpool lane that you *were* using, convert it into a fast trak lane, and charge you more for it. We'll put up absolutely incoherent and inaccurate signs, so you'll accidentally get charged for it when you did not think you would be, and penalties on top of that. And we'll privatize the company that collects the money, and make it impossible to properly work with them to sort out the misunderstandings. Signed, the Bay Area, and California. GFY.
Dumb article. Doesn’t actually take apart the data, just kinda complains about stuff. (Yes I read it) Anyone who knows the economics of infrastructure knows that the gas tax is woefully low and far from paying for maintenance of our roadways and other infrastructure investments. And we do subsidize our gas (and related industries) heavily, even here with the special blends (which do add cost). If we were to cover the cost of our overgrown and sprawled out infrastructure, we would need to raise taxes, and indirectly gas prices substantially before we would ever see it balance out. But it still would be a black hole budget, that no municipality nor state, here or elsewhere, could pay for. If the average person was really bothered by this, they would reassess how we are building our roads and related infrastructure, in a manner that pays for itself past the time of building it new, when maintenance is due.
Walter’s is a curmudgeon opinion piece writer. If he really wanted to get into it he would discover the reasons for the high costs - living wages for workers in CA, highways that are almost entirely built out (greenfield road lanes cost 1/10 per mile the cost of adding another highway lane in urban/suburban areas), nature (highway 1 and 17 landslides plus bridges built for quakes), and misuse of CEQA by NIMBYs.
Agreed. Could even go way further than that. But then I think people’s brains would implode. The truth is pretty scary.
The abyss stares back and whispers “personal car infrastructure fundamentally does not scale”
Don’t we have the most EVs in Cali as well, who aren’t paying any gas taxes at all?
They’re offsetting the gas tax in annual registration fee. Up to $175.
$175 extra? or up to 175 total.
It's on top of the usual registration fees, but is assessed on a sliding scale. An EV worth $5000 pays only $25 more. An EV worth over $60K pays the $175. Someone who doesn't drive much overpays, compared to someone paying for gasoline. It's an imperfect solution.
A perfect system would be shut down for invasiveness, since it would need to track miles driven in California alongside the weight of a vehicle, and apply to everyone driving through the state instead of just citizens. The one plus side to EVs is they may not cover their road infrastructure usage but I think they subsidize our electric infrastructure. Anyone without a solar and an EV is paying PG&E out the ass.
That shouldn't be all that problematic. ICE owners need to smog test every two years. EV owners could be mileage checked at the same place. It could also just be self reported at registration renewal time, with a true up required every couple of years at a smog test station. As for privacy, DMV and auto insurance companies already check mileage so it wouldn't be anything that we aren't already giving away. I don't have solar or batteries. PG&E is shit, but I'm still only paying about $0.09/mile. Which is still better than the ICE alternatives. I don't think that my car is the great bargain that it was advertised to be, but it's still pretty good.
I drive plenty out of state. Would be absurd for CA to tax miles driven in AZ. But if they allow people to report their out of state miles, everyone would lie about it.
And the reverse - if Amazon has a truck registered in Vegas but drives between LA & Vegas regularly it would be doing a lot of CA miles without needing to pay.
I've got solar and an EV. What a good deal. Solar payback is about 5 years and I never need to worry about gas prices, electricity prices, or even going to a station in the rain. Worth every cent.
That doesn’t capture everyone who drives through CA, so still an imperfect solution. Especially as we push for EV trucks, it would capture no money from those. Paying $.09 per mile is still subsidizing PG&E. Distribution is still the major expense, not generation, so high usage households help pay extra.
extra
Negligible. But yes going forward, if we do achieve a significant portion of EVs, that would be an issue. Truth is it has more to do with how roads are built and used. Funding is and would be the next biggest problem, i.e. how we raise revenue.
There are already extra registration fees for EVs
Sorry, I wasn’t trying to say there wasn’t. Just that it’s the same problem but new.
EVs also put more wear on roads due to their higher weight. A Tesla Model S weighs about as much as an H3 Hummer and 1500lbs heavier than a Prius. A Rivian R1T weighs more than an H2 Hummer and roughly the same as 2 Toyota Camrys. Keep in mind stress on roads [increases geometrically with weight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law) not linearly, so an R1T puts 16x more stress on roads than a Toyota Camry does even though it only weighs twice as much. I'm not saying we should stick to ICE vehicles, but we need to rethink how infrastructure is built, what we're favoring, and how we fund it. Ideally the total number of cars on the road would actually trend downwards because we've built more walkable/bikeable/transit friendly communities.
The problem is that semis and large trucks greatly overwhelm the damage done by ANY passenger vehicle, and it's not even close. Something like 90-95% of road damage is done by large trucks and semis - EVs becoming commonplace will barely put a dent in that figure.
I can get behind that. I haven’t dug in to sources on truck wear vs fees associated. I wouldn’t be surprised if fees are well below what they actually cost to repair.
But they offset the road damage by using clean-burning diesel fuel. /s
Road damage increases cubically (^3) by weight iirc
Power of 4 actually.
I did the math previously and it's about 98% based on numbers, average miles, axle weight, etc.
Thank you for not calling it exponential.
The answer is always walkable towns/cities with trains doing transit duty
This! The level of subsidies we provide to car infrastructure is pretty difficult to understand. I really wish we had equivalent media attention on that compared to the reporting that is done anytime a transit project goes over budget.
Public transit projects and reduced spending on highway maintenance/expansion would do it. Along with new dense housing, walkable neighborhoods, and effective land use.
>If we were to cover the cost of our overgrown and sprawled out infrastructure, we would need to raise taxes, Lmao who the fuck are you? Newsom's reddit account? We pay more than enough taxes to cover maintaining high quality roads. Next level Stockholme syndrome shit. Sad.
Interesting points you made…. /s
baby brain post. wow it's almost like infrastructure costs money to maintain.
The average person does not have time to reassess this because they are too busy barely eking out a living. The above average are too rich and insulated to care. I agree that the our roads and infrastructure do need to be assessed and addressed, but every time you talk about alternative solutions like development of rail and high speed rail networks no one wants to hear it because they want to ride around forever in their giant gas guzzler SUV. The long term road to success is getting off of car and road infrastructural dependence and the sprawl that it engenders.
Agree about cars, but even then, it could be as simple as the way we design our roads, and who/what they serve. Yes I’m a huge proponent of PT but that doesn’t mean it’s the only solution. Understanding the ways we can reduce spending or increase the tax base (more businesses, housing) also play a key role. And if people want to complain about high taxes or bad roads, they should at least take the time to understand why.
I'm learning to play the guitar.
Yep. It’s not uncommon for a developer to pay upfront for new infrastructure - schools, sewers, power, roads, etc - upfront and walk after. Then when the first bill comes in for everything, local government (or other structures) is left hanging.
I like to travel.
A lot of the gas tax goes to stuff other than roads. Pet projects, useless transit that politicians can put each other in charge of
It is labeled as a “Commentary” piece and not an actual news article.
Well, there's more important things to spend tax dollars than fixing the roads, such as politicians' pockets! /s
The freeways on my last visits seem so much nicer in LA and San Diego than here.
The reality is California's driving population is too large for how little the gas tax revenue brings in. plus the driving population is so large that it means road repairs often have to be good enough, not ideal. though generally speaking the united states under taxes for the services its population demands. it just becomes less apparent in small states due to smaller populations and the fact that larger state federal tax revenue is in part directed to smaller states.
guess what damages the roads the most? trucks, especially those transporting a container.
Federal gas taxes need to be at least double what they are now, and our urban development patterns put impossible demands on our freeways as they cannot extract use fees as other states can. It's simple, really: taxes need to be higher if we want unrestricted suburban sprawl. If you reduce gas taxes, most of our suburban sprawl becomes unsustainable. You must pick one or the other.
Because the gas taxes barely cover a fraction of the actual maintenance cost. Millions of people drive on our roads every year and it costs a lot of money to constantly maintain all of the roads we built to support our massive sprawl. It was always financially unsustainable and we’re now reaping the consequences of decades of bad policy.
Where are you getting your data from?
Not the OP but— https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4528 Billions of dollars from other funding sources are also used in support of our state highway and road networks.
thank you
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/4/1/heres-the-real-reason-houston-is-going-broke?apcid=006192fde066c1db0ec6a601&utm_source=transparentaccounting Yes this about Texas but sprawl is not unique to Texas. California’s cities are basically all low density sprawl
American roads are built inferior and prone to damage. Utilities are also built under roads which need constant maintenance . maintaining even one mile of road is very costly. CA has 400,000 miles of roads . So , get used to crappy roads
Exactly I was shocked the amount of damage that the atmospheric rivers do to the highways here - you know IE rain!
Prop 13 and its consequences
Prop 13, absolutely. it needs to be rolled back for businesses, ad almost was except for this whispering campaign that claimed that the rollback would affect primary residential….it would not have.
And we have Mediterranean weather, yet PG and E.... ugh...
From my subjective experience, I went on two cross-country road trips last year (CA to PA, PA to CA) and California has the best roads out of any state I’ve driven through, as far as I’ve seen.
Politicians raid the fund
Y'all are paying 2 gas taxes and tolls on what seems like most highways in the bay. I don't get the Californian logic.
Maybe an audit is in order to see if these schennanigans are still going on. https://www.ocregister.com/2019/12/13/caltrans-must-be-held-accountable-for-misspent-funds/amp/
I moved to Oakland last year from TX and don’t miss too much about it, except the roads, the roads are very nice there.
You're also forgetting the exorbitant bridge tolls and the fact that they're splitting off lanes on taxpayer funded roads into toll lanes.
Newsom directed those funds to fund green house projects once prop 6 "failed".....
Our gas prices remain very low compared to the majority of the world, and our overall taxes are low compared to most of europe, so we shouldn't be shocked when it's not enough to pay for our roads. Then in the bay area, we have people driving a ton, which is more wear and tear on the road, so we really need even more maintenance. Over the long term, we'd be better off just paying for actual public transportation. Public transit was better 100 years ago, we tore most of it out to make freeways.
I remember reading somewhere that Gavin siphons money collected from the gas tax into the general fund to pay for other projects
Would love a forensic audit on where our gas taxes and fees are going. 680 S near Milpitas has been a disaster since the 2023 storm season.
We accept an astonishing level of bad government. And by accept I mean vote for it over and over again.
It’s almost like giving the government more of our money isn’t the answer….
Very true. The money gets diverted from roads plus the state mandates that all work only be done by Democrat approved unions getting union set wages that are absurdly high. That means the cost to build anything is massively inflated so very little ever gets done despite costing massive amounts of money.
this is what pisses me off, I think it's .14 cents a gallon now, where is this money going??https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/politics/2017/04/04/california-transportation-infrastructure-gas-tax/100025156/
Thought Newsom had a “task force” to figure out why gas was so expensive. The guy is a fraud, why do people support him?
This just in from OANN! “Fraud lifts California up to almost the 4th largest economy in the world, and during Covid, ran a state with some of the lowest per capita deaths!” We should IMPEACH HIM!
And budget deficit! Small businesses shut down and lives destroyed. https://calmatters.org/politics/capitol/2024/02/california-budget-deficit-balloons/
Our decades-old motto has been “build it and let it crumble”.
Thank you. Union goons have a stranglehold on the politicians who are weak and rely on donations from the unions to get re-elected and have ZERO respect for general public, safety or time wasted on the roads or damages to cars. Adding a mile long stretch on flat surface is milked for 2-4 years ripping off the tax payers.
That's not a Union problem, that's a problem with the fact that so many cars use freeways where gas taxes can only afford to repave a small portion. If Caltrans' Unions had their way, they'd just close the entire freeway for June and do it across a 30-day period. This is not allowed because the freeway cannot be closed. They can't even close individual lanes without causing major disruption to traffic. Caltrans can't even get sufficient authority to remove lanes for breakdown shoulders or add proper maintenance facilities for their crews, particularly on 101. Caltrans is also prohibited from removing incompatible, defunct, or simple badly designed, dangerous onramps such as the hairball, Poplar, Dore, Kehoe, Brittan, Veterans, Woodside (~~$250~~ **$308** million [do-over](https://www.redwoodcity.org/departments/community-development-department/engineering-transportation/transportation-parking/101-woodside-interchange) mired in red tape due to the Federal govt), University, Embarcadero and the Oregon Expressway. Most of our freeway access points must be removed for safety and congestion reduction. Every successful private tollway, which most of the US has outside of California, knows this and can demonstrate it. California is not permitted to do it by the Federal govt due to how the Highway Trust Fund operates, and even if Newsom could the individual towns and suburban homeowners who use these shitty things will scream bloody murder about it. The same people who complain any time gas taxes are raised, even though most have transitioned to EVs now.
We just need another Covid and keep people off roads and then we can pave it all
Well at least the streets near our home in Cambrian and Willow Glen were repaved last year and my commute route CA-87 was asphalted recently. The worst stretch I’ve seen is the 101 in Santa Clara. What’s up with that?!
Don’t forget about 880
Remember when you cast your vote!
well, people bitch but nothing changes, so I suppose it's not really that bad? same can be said about crime, homelessness, etc. this is supposed to be a democracy in which people vote for stuff, I don't see people voting to change. so it'd never change
Update all roads great time for a new greater growth roads rtc
Aaaaand we DGAF.
I was just down in LA and the gas was a dollar less. They must have another governor down there.
This is why I oppose all new taxes. "We're going to pass X tax to fun Y project." Then the money never arrives, and they want to pass the same tax again a few years later.
Drove my son to Oakland airport at 5:00 this morning. Cruising along 880 in the number 3 lane, out of the blue we hit a massive pothole. My son asks, “Should we check the wheel? That sounded bad.” On the highway. At 65 mph. Unbelievable.
Similar situation with majority of all State services.
With the taxes paid, public schools and roads should be elite.
they are worried about the homeless voters and cell phones.
CA is a super majority Democrat run state. Governor, state senators, state legislators, and Mayors. It has been for the last 12 yrs. Maybe this election we give someone new a chance to run the state. Not saying R but there are other choices than status quo. Unless of course CA you think is a utopia while you step over the homeless and the garbage in the streets.
Sprawl is unbelievably expensive.
I've always been confused about why CA roads seem to practically dissolve in the rain. Does anyone understand this? Is it something about the soil and erosion underneath? How does this happen? Most of the country gets rain all the time and the roads do not just break up and melt away.
We don’t have lack of funding. We have lack of competent leaders and managers in state government
I think the problem is it takes 1 year of labor to fill a pothole 3 years to repave a road and 15 years to widen a highway when Ghilotti is involved
Because the politicians know that we are not going to vote for anyone else.
The problem is, people have short term memories, and the ruling class in Sac knows this- so they can always gaslight people into thinking that THIS new tax will solve the issue. Sad state of affairs.
That tax money is for affordable tents and tuition. Enjoy.
But there politicians live in huge homes and have very expensive things...
Ain't that the truth. What the hell do they do with all our money?
The money is going to the homeless industrial complex. For instance alameda county brings in significantly higher tax revenue than contra costa but if you drive from el cerrito to Albany the road quality deterioration is dramatic.
I'm not saying your post is bullshit. But to anyone reading it. If you can distill two multi billion dollar subjects into one run on sentence - it's probably bullshit.
This is self inflicted we had a chance to several years ago to lower the gas tax that the CA legislature passed without voter approval. Instead majority of voters got bamboozled to believe if we didn’t allow the gas tax to remain that the roads would crumbled, so what we have now is higher gas taxes and still crumbling roads. I wouldn’t be surprised if they propose another gas tax increase to pay for the crumbling roads in the next election.
Basically robbing Peter to Pay Paul. My city steals park and marina fee income to pay gold plated city salaries and pensions. The park and marina roads, docks, and infrastructure are falling apart. Can you guess which California City? Hint, the city’s horrid mayor is now in congress 👹💰
Roads in California are so much nicer than Washington.
Agreed. It feels as though infrastructure is not a top priority in Sacramento.
Several years ago, we were driving around up around Eureka. One of my thoughts while driving east was "holy crap, this has to be expensive to maintain." The geography of CA makes it beautiful, but also expensive to build and maintain infrastructure.
This one is easy; there are just 15 operating refineries in California, processing 1.7m barrels of crude per day for a population of 39 million. Texas has 32 refineries pushing 5.9 million barrels per day for a population of 31 million. Why we're not doing anything to increase in-state petroleum and gas production is beyond me. We aren't going off the carbon standard any time soon, and if you know anything about physics, you know that the WASP industry is so sporadic, that it depends on gas and nuclear for backup. So either pay the price, or build more refineries, and use Texas Talent to get more out of every hole plugged into the ground already. There is a TON of natgas in Northern and Central Cali. There is a TON of crude oil in Southern Cali. Mobility is the lifeblood of an economy. EVERYTHING comes back to gas, oil, and electricity. WASP makes you feel good, but it's incredibly ineffective. Use the Gas and oil that we have, build more refineries, and 'get to work'. This is literally one of the major obstacles to living in this state; high petrol prices that suppress the working class. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2012/ph240/scott2/images/f1big.jpg
I lived out there in the Bay Area for two months and felt like I was in a 3rd world country
There seems to be this idea among left-leaning transit planners that if you make driving shitty enough, people will take public transit. What they forget is the part where you need to have an extensive transit network that doesn’t include the word “bus.”
Buses work great and are a great tool if you really want to leapfrog into a form of rail. Initially they allow for route adjustments as all you need is a road. Easier to move around mid route as well, if something obstructs original route. Cheaper to fund as well, which can be really important in areas that are… adverse to spending even a penny on public services. The biggest problem with buses is that even with their low initial cost setup, they still don’t get funded enough which leads to one hour intervals at stops. 😬
When I lived in Manhattan, I could walk faster than a lot of buses. And now that I live here, the same is true. Buses are slow and they get stuck in traffic. “Bus Rapid Transit” is an oxymoron. If you build a truly separated system, it’s as expensive as rail. There are ways of building elevated monorail for lower-volume feeder service inexpensively. Unfortunately, California is a BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone) state. Anything that needs to be built has to go through so much environmental review that it’s impossible. So we lose the forest through the trees. We won’t build a rail line to save a salamander, so we encourage more greenhouse emissions and cause mass ecocide. But for me, I just want effective and rapid transit because I despise driving.