An excellent analysis of failed public leadership that had decades of repercussions, and even with the new big surge of infrastructure bond funds, may still be unable to set right after years of failing to meet basic needs of maintenance and necessary upgrades.
We are exactly in the same position regarding the Parkway, where every year we slip millions of dollars further behind in maintenance, and there are virtually no upgrades other than the few which can be funded through the occasional grant.
Dan Walters: Finally, an opportunity to fix roads
By Dan Walters - Bee Columnist Published 12:00 am PST Sunday, November 12, 2006
Jerry Brown will be sworn in as California's attorney general in January, precisely 32 years after being inaugurated for the first of his two terms as governor.
Brown's return to Sacramento has many ironic aspects, not the least being what else will be happening in January: The state Transportation Commission will begin allocating tens of billions of bond and tax dollars to reverse the shameful deterioration of California's once-superb highway system that began when Brown, more or less on a whim, virtually stopped construction. Brown declared an "era of limits," halted hundreds of long-planned projects and laid off thousands of state highway designers and builders.
California didn't stop growing, but succeeding governors made no appreciable progress in undoing what Brown wrought. The state has already added more than 14 million bodies to its population since Brown's inauguration in 1975, as well as more than 10 million additional cars and trucks, and they have relentlessly pounded California's undermaintained, overstressed state and local roadways.
California has the nation's worst traffic congestion and some of its worst pavement. We spend less per capita on highways than any other state in a weltering array of federal, state and local transportation planning and financing schemes that often work at cross-purposes. It's no wonder that the Transportation Commission declared in its annual report last year that California's transportation program "is in shambles" and "inherently unstable, unreliable, inflexible and inadequate."
Suddenly, however, there's some money. Voters have approved a measure that will require about $2 billion a year in sales taxes on fuel to be spent on transportation, except under emergency conditions, and a $19.9 billion bond issue sponsored by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature.
It's merely a down payment on the $100 billion-plus that's needed to bring highways and other transportation systems up to snuff, it adds even more complexity to an already obtuse system, and it's less satisfactory than stable, long-term financing, such as an increase in gas taxes. But it's a start.
