Many years ago, a horrible set of decisions were made by public leadership that attempted to re-direct this primarily suburban and car oriented state into an urban and mass transit oriented one, directly against the best interests of the public and the economy, which are dependent upon efficient, reliable transportation able to go anywhere personal and business considerations require.
The results are clearly evident and captured in this recent column by Dan Walters.
An excerpt.
“When Jerry Brown began his first stint as California's governor in 1975 – he apparently yearns for a reprise next year – he more or less shut down the highway construction program that had transformed the state, for better or worse, in the three decades following World War II.
“Despite legislative pressure, which included eliminating state Transportation Department Director Adriana Gianturco's salary, major highway construction was put on what turned out to be semi-permanent hiatus.
“A few new freeways were built, such as the Century Freeway in Los Angeles and Interstate 5 between Sacramento and Stockton. But dozens of projects, some of them in the works for decades, were erased, leaving Caltrans' last official freeway map a quaint artifact.
“For instance, the map depicts a 350-mile-long, north-south freeway along the east side of the San Joaquin Valley, linking Bakersfield with Marysville, but only brief stretches of Highway 65 on the north and south ends were ever built.
“The most controversial gap in the freeway system is Interstate 710, which runs northward from Long Beach, but abruptly ends at Alhambra, 4.5 miles short of its intended connection with Interstate 210 at Pasadena.”
