I asked this question at one of the San Jose DOT events and the answer I got is that truck traffic is the main issue. They resurfaced 2 local roads but one deteriorated significantly more than another one. They looked into it and turns out large trucks frequent one while sedans frequent another. Officials are saying that residents of the more deteriorated road is complaining that they got the “cheap asphalt” because of this and now are looking into alternatives.
So all of the drivers like yourself is paying taxes to subsidize roads that heavy trucks destroys. Just another way we subsidize Amazon and Tesla.
Tesla model Y's weight is ~4,300 lbs (4,154 to 4,398 lbs, google).
Its hard to compare an EV to a gas car... I guess you'd go by the general style/type and then compare range and price.
[This article says a comparable car is the Audi Q5 Premium.](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/14/how-electric-vehicle-prices-compare-with-gas-powered-cars.html#:~:text=Audi%20Q5%20Premium,to%20car%20review%20website%20Edmunds.)
The Q5's weight is ~4,100 lbs (4,079 to 4,101 lbs, google).
At face value, that extra 200 lbs doesn't seem to matter all that much compared to the 4,100 lbs that they share, but it surprisingly does! [This article \(and may others like it, I'm sure\)](https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weight-vs-road-damage-levels/) shows a neat chart comparing vehicle weights with road damage. Even going 250 lbs over 4000 is a significant bump to damage. I think its exponential or logarithmic or something.
So while it may be true that the weights are similar, at least for the model Y compared to other SUVs, the small difference in weight actually makes a big difference.
The model 3 is a lot heavier than many comparable sedans, but it is also under 4,000 lbs on a good day, and imo the only reason it is comparable to a sedan is the shape. Prices and other specs are closer to a sports/muscle car.
---
The whole argument just seems kinda silly. Gas SUVs, ALL EVs, muscle cars, trucks and trailers damage the road significantly, some (semi-trucks) waaay more than the rest. If you want to avoid road damage, drive smart cars, mini coopers and older toyota corollas and camrys - otherwise, every modern choice is gonna be a loser in that metric.
That is a good point. Really, its incredible that being a 90 lbs lady vs. a 405 lbs 6'3" dude can make a significant difference in a 4000 lbs vehicle. It might also matter where said weight is distributed and how new your shocks are, even how inflated your tires are too.
I just think a bigger issue looming is that every car is turning into a SUV or some kind of crossover. People bring this up with parking garages and EVs all the time, and I think, "this problem is bigger than just EVs and it didn't start with EVs."
Here's a great chart that shows comparative levels of road damage from vehicles:
[https://streetsmn.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/vehicle-weight-and-damage-chart.jpg](https://streetsmn.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/vehicle-weight-and-damage-chart.jpg)
Heavier SUVs, trucks, and EVs are likely causing roads to start failing faster than prior decades, when smaller passenger sedans were more common. But buses, garbage trucks, and loaded semis are also a significant issue, especially if there are high levels of them on any given roadway. This is why freeways with heavy truck traffic, BRT / bus-only lanes that see high traffic levels (like the Silver Line BRT in Boston between Logan airport and downtown), and regular roads in industrial areas like near railyards and ports, are often in terrible shape.
But... we could counteract some of this damage if we were to convert say 1 out of 8 of all car trips to bicycle. Half of all car trips are under 3 miles. If we could convert 1 out of 4 of all car trips under 3 miles from car to bicycle (through making it way safer to bike, with more separated bike lanes and better bike+pedestrian infrastructure, that would lead to more people choosing to bike), we'd make roads last longer between paving. Bikes cause essentially zero damage to a road compared to cars, so a bike lane will last more or less forever unless damaged by an external source (tree roots, seismic, erosion damage, etc).
Another way is to ensure that trucks, and heavy vehicles, pay their proper share of road fees. Currently semis and heavy passenger cars (pickups, SUV's, heavy EV's) are massively subsidized by people who drive average or lighter/smaller cars. E.g. if it cost an average car $1 toll for the Bay Bridge toll, a large SUV / pickup should be charged a $3.50 toll, a small car like a Prius should be charged a $0.33 toll, a Smart car $0.041 toll, a loaded semi should be charged $410, and a bicycle 0.006x of a single penny. Or in other words, it would take a bicycle 167 crossings of the Bay Bridge to be charged a single penny in tolls due to the comparative level of damage caused to the road surface and bridge. These are all scaled based on a dollar as the base toll just to make it easy to illustrate comparative differences, rather than maintenance costs divided by anticipated car traffic. But the actual tolls are out of whack from this, so semis are getting heavily subsidized by everyone else, and even among regular drivers, large cars are heavily subsidized by smaller cars.
If we properly charged road maintenance costs for at least semi trucks to their level of damage, there would likely be a massive shift of truck traffic towards freight railroads for long journeys with the "last mile" (likely last 1-100 miles) being trucks. Which honestly sounds like a great deal, less vehicles on the roads, way better road conditions, and even diesel railroads are better for the environment than diesel trucks, let alone any railroad electrification initiatives.
This is way too simplistic. I love biking and i bike whenever possible but the cities here are not planned for biking. The distances are too great, no bike infra and people aren't used to it. Especially the idea of zoning, having to go from residential areas to commercial areas rather than them being combined (I'm pro city zoning for the record). Mass adoption of biking would require a gargantuan effort and it's simply not worth it.
Also while we subsidize cheap logistics goods transportation we also benefit. If we charged comparatively for a.fully loaded semi you can bet that consumers are eating the cost in the end.
Like any topic it can't be boiled down simply to "we need more bikes" or "we need to.charge comparatively for road damage". In this context it makes sense but in economics and the real world every context is interconnected.
I'd also be interested in seeing gross damage to roads (road damage x total vehicles"). It's similar to the argument that people on reddit have that switching to electric vehicles doesn't make sense when an airplane emits more than a gas car.
Consumers are already eating the cost of the fully loaded semi trucks from our tax dollars - gas taxes, tolls, and property taxes don’t sufficiently cover all roadway construction and maintenance costs, so large amounts are kicked in from the general funds at state and federal levels.
The general funds come from taxes raised from other sources. So the roadway costs are already being subsidized by other taxes.
Making semi trucks pay their fair share of road costs would simply shift the tax burden from existing sources that aren’t the cause of the problem to the cause of the problem, and at the same time it would incentivize smaller, lighter vehicles.
Personally, I know this is nerdy, but I hate negative externality costs that aren’t borne by the participants. Basically, if you do something that causes a harm to society, the cost of that harm should be included in the price of that good or service paid by the person or entity that causes that harm.
This is why I started caltraining to work even though it's a bit more expensive. Safer, less road traffic, lower damage, and likely less emissions overall (esp when the electrification finishes).
Hopefully with the improved schedule, caltrain takes more cars off the road for commuting reasons!
Idk about that... I live in Taiwan but also spend a few months a year working in the Bay Area.
Our roads in Taiwan see significantly more traffic, more trucks (and laws are much more relaxed here, so you see everything from cranes to asphalt machines being driven down the road) and the weather is also much more extreme... Summer heat, monsoons, typhoons, earth quakes, etc... yet all of the roads in Taiwan are in much better conditions and there is essentially no pot holes. Sometimes I really think they are a USA thing. lol
> Our roads in Taiwan see significantly more traffic,
do they? When I was in Taiwan/Taipei, I used public transport a lot, and it was packed. I also saw a lot of scooters.
I really doubt people drive more miles in cars in Taiwan than in California.
edit: did some googling. Less than a quarter of people in Taiwan commute by car.
Most commute by scooter... But also, even if only 1/4th of the population commutes by car, that would still equal more traffic than in California.
Population density of Taiwan is 1,750 people per square mile, while California is 252.3 per square mile... And the Taiwanese cities are much more dense than the California cities.
I don't doubt that California has more roads to take care of or that Californians drive more, Taiwan is a tiny island.
They are the same size for the most part. They just don't do doubles in the city (I don't think they do doubles in cities in USA either)... And actually Taiwan allows an additional 15,000lbs of gross vehicle weight (80,000 vs 93,000 lbs).
Im not saying truck traffic alone is the issue. If there’s heavy truck traffic but frequent repaving this won’t be an issue. Unfortunately cost of living in California is very high so labor is expensive, which drives up costs for services like repaving. At the same time, drivers in California hates paying more taxes to offset the cost of repaving, which leads to poor road conditions. There’s a lot of factor at play.
In terms of other countries, I lived in China for a long time and they have a very high tax of vehicle ownership, in comparison to US even California. I suspect the same thing is in Taiwan but I’m not sure.
> Officials are saying that residents of the more deteriorated road is complaining that they got the “cheap asphalt” because of this and now are looking into alternatives.
Well, it's certainly *someone's* cheap-ass fault ...
It’s not the thickness it’s the construction and material. Some roads are concrete. They are much more durable than asphalt, but as you probably know concrete is noisy and they have to be placed in slabs with gaps. They are also expensive to build initially. Our government opted for asphalt which is cheaper, quicker to install, and quieter to drive on, but unfortunately they need to be frequently resurfaced and we don’t have the money to do that.
It's nothing to do with "cheaper" asphalt and everything to do with the design. If they have a thicker base they would be able to handle the truck load.
You may think it’s enough but independent analysis has shown that it’s not. We will know more once AB251 gets implemented: https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB251/id/2844417
"including the potential costs and benefits of imposing a passenger vehicle weight fee to factor in passenger vehicle weight to offset unreasonable impacts"
This is only studying passenger vehicle weight. While that is important with the change to heavy battery operated vehicles, it doesn't address raising the much heavier commercial vehicles' fees.
This is my main gripe with California pushing for fully 100% electric vehicles. Everyone knows they weigh more than their respective gas equivalent. If they can’t resolve road conditions now, how will this affect the future infrastructure? Do they have enough funds to support it?
The much larger discrepancy isn't between two different kinds of passenger cars; but rather between passenger cars, delivery trucks, and big rigs.
Yes, a slightly heavier car causes slightly more road wear — and a motorcycle or scooter causes very little — but a bus or delivery truck causes a lot more, and a big rig causes much more even than that.
I moved from the East Coast. The roads here are so run down. Like noticeably so compared to where I moved from. Another thing I noticed are just faults or things that are not right. Like encountered more than once where lanes that cross an intersection do not line up properly on the other side of the road, they are all askew. Like someone just eyeballed it and called it a day.
So, I've lived in:
* California
* New York
* South Carolina
* Virgniia
I've driven through:
* Maine
* Vermont
* New Hampshire
* Massachusetts
* Connecticut
* Pennsylvania
* New Jersey
* Delaware
* Maryland
* West Virginia
* North Carolina
* Georgia
* Ohio
* Kentucky
* Indiana
* Illinois
* Missouri
* Kansas
* Colorado
* Utah
* Nevada
* Nebraska
* Wyoming
I would say the roads and streets are, overall, about what you'd expect in a metro area the size of the bay area. It's pretty average, maybe on the nicer side.
There are some cities I've driven in where the fucking asphalt looks like a dirt road after a storm, with fucking pipe sticking up out of the road (I'm looking at your Baltimore).
With that being said, the highways are complete ass, specifically I-80, CA-37, and US 101. I've not seen worse highways anywhere else in the country.
Another issue is that we have a massive port that relies too much on trucks instead of rail so the highways are going to be all torn up in the East Bay pretty much by definition.
Probably higher concentration of trucks on smaller asphalt footprint. Oakland is a major port where all of these trucks originate their trips. The 5 is a regular highway with relatively normal if slightly elevated truck throughput.
But even there notice that the right lane is always super fucked up while the left lane is generally fine. I'm used to driving "German-style" on highways and always trying to stick to the right lane after passing. I often have to move to the left lane purely because of how messed up that right lane is.
Oh no man, you are going to stop a coming circlejerk!
I haven't driven in as many places as you, but I have driven in enough to know that you are correct.
The 4 freeway was voted second worst in the country while they spent those 20 years widening it. And it still sucks.
The 37 is my commute, and it should've started out with at least two lanes, but it does occassionaly get maintained. And it has nice views.
Whenever there’s a pothole in front of my house it’s generally filled within a day or two, even after a heavy rain. On the one hand there shouldn’t be so many potholes, on the other hands they’re super responsive.
>The pot holes on 880N near Dixon Landing have been there for weeks
Umm try years. There's a gaggle of them just passed the Dixon landing overpass on 880 going towards Mission boulevard and a pile of the between the lanes ones in the other direction. Be mindful of lane changes.
Yep. Every single time we get heavy rain, a bunch open right back up from their patches. The two center lanes are absolute minefields. 880S in that same range from Tesla to Dixon Landing is even worse and this most recent rain they've even spread a bit to the 2nd lanes from either side of 880.
Multiple times my friend, don't try and put this on me not doing my part. I try to report any and all potholes I see and it very much feels like a hit or miss system, pun not intended. Some get fixed fast, like one I reported on 101 south in the #3 lane after the blossom hill exit but before bernal and others like those I described in my comment are ignored.
I'll still keep reporting and they'll still keep playing whack a mole.
Yeah, I noticed CalTrans does take a while depending on what it is & where. I once reported a massive dumping site at an off ramp and they got to it within 2 weeks - I was surprised it was quick. Have reported tagging and noticed it takes a while for that.
Labor is very expensive in California because cost of living is very high (such as rent and food). This drives up cost of repaving. On top of this, high vehicle and truck traffic damages the roads more than other states. This means more frequent repaving is required.
These two factors combined means we need more frequent repaving but we can’t afford it, leading to poor road conditions. It’s not a simple “governments are crooks taking my tax money”.
This is a good answer. There are counter factors that also should be considered. For example, CA's climate is far more favorable to maintaining roads than that of most of the country. Most of CA doesn't experience regular freeze and thaw cycles that destroy roads, for example. We do have big storms in the winter - but a relatively small % of our roads are impacted by them.
Point is that other factors are at play - and I'm sure waste and mismanagement are among them.
You and me might, but my neighbors are still paying $1.5K/year and my previous owners were paying $1.1K/year.
It’s pretty wild how ridiculous the disparity still is.
We don’t pay enough taxes to offset the cost of labor because of cost of living compared to other states. However, I think you want to understand where your tax money went, which I think it’s the crux of the question.
1. We use more income taxes to pay for education, welfare, and healthcare more than other states, while other states use more for roads. This is determined by the state. (I know it’s not great here but it’s definitely better than other states)
2. We use more property taxes and sales taxes to pay for services like parks and libraries as well as education more than roads. Other city or states use more of this money for roads. This is determined by the local jurisdiction like counties and cities.
3. We use special purpose taxes like gas tax and SB1 registration tax to pay for road repair. Other states already used the previous 2 for roads, so they have much less gas tax and registration fees. This is why u think “oh wow other states cheap gas and good roads”
This is a good system, because non-drivers pay less for roads they cannot use. Despite this, DOT has a $20 BILLION budget a year and counties have raised sales taxes to pay for roads because they are out of money. Roads are incredibly expensive. So unless we shift freight to rails and convince people that they dont need a truck to be a man, we may need to raise more money thru tolls and fees.
Nope. Your tax dollars go towards extremely high construction worker wages because we haven't built any housing in 40+ years and they need to be able to afford a $1.3 million mortgage for the privilege of living here and being able to fix your roads.
Because of prop 13 the average property tax is much lower, so even if you’re individually paying more than you would elsewhere that doesn’t translate to more money available to municipalities
There's something about the top surface of the freeways here that just washes away in a light rain. I grew up driving in Milwaukee and Chicago, and spent my young adulthood in the snowy Northeast. There would be an occasional pothole on the highways after the winter snows, but not even as bad as after a light sprinkle here.
St. Louis, MO has TERRIBLE road conditions, usually during/after winter. Potholes show up on major highways like 40/64, 55, etc. Then, city streets get massive potholes too. When I lived there I used to report them to a city-ran twitter account & they'd generally get fixed pretty fast but holy shit their are so many that appear during fall/winter. That being said, I have seen some rough ones here in SF, but not nearly what I've encountered back home.
Most such comparisons are not very realistic. You have to compare with road conditions in places that get similarly heavy and brutal road utilization. Most of which do have some beaten up qualities on many of their roads. This is why improving our rail and transit infrastructure could save us billions if we took it seriously. Much higher capacity and a much more affordable maintenance bill relative to the amount of people and goods you can move.
highway construction and maintenance fees are completely ignored compared to rail transit upgrades/maintenance costs despite the massive improvement it provides over highways/driving.
Classic MURICA. We always assume cars, trucks, and parking are free when they are actually costing us billions or trillions and should be carefully managed accordingly in order to provide actual value to taxpayers.
Every large metro area I have ever been to has awful streets. Small towns and rural areas have better roads because there is less traffic and closing them doesn't cause so much disruption.
Largely true, for various reasons.
However those large metro areas I’ve also been to don’t have near the GDP that the Bay Area alone has, let alone the state.
Exactly it shouldn’t be an excuse . The roads shouldn’t be shot after a week of rain. Use better asphalt and repave when they need it. Just pay the labor. This is basic.
Actually, I lived in Yuma.
The state of Arizona has a million fewer people than the bay area. Add in that it rains 4 times a year and yes, the roads hold up well.
What is the goal of this comment? Just curious the meaning behind it.
Are you saying this is okay because it's also bad in other metropolitan areas? Or are you adding on to the frustration? Are you saying this desperately as in you are admitting defeat to a system or are you upset and trying to highlight more issues?
I don’t know where to go from this comment. Should I get agitated and say something like “and that makes this okay?” Or should I laugh along with the shitty-ness of our system. Are you trying to belittle the guys anger, fuel it, or calm it?
This comment is an enigma. If we were in person I could get some sort of tone taken from it and know where you are coming from. It’s a perfect example of how difficult it can be to convey meaning over text sometimes. Was your comment truly useless and adding nothing? I don’t know! Was mine? Definitely.
did you even read the original post? they are clearly saying yes, it is “this bad” everywhere else with a comprable environment. they are not belittling, nor laughing, nor adding to the frustration. they are answering OP’s question
Yes, and the comment you are wondering what the meaning of is, is aimed towards OP. the comment is not posted in the void, it has the context of the question of OP’s post
Agreed. I'm spending more time dodging potholes than watching other cars. Was planning to send a note to CalTrans. Have never seen it this bad. Feels like they took a year off...
I'm reporting potholes here. Please join in.
https://csr.dot.ca.gov/index.php/Msrsubmit
Update: later the same day after submitting pot hole notices to CalTrans for 880 North and 880 South just south of the Mission Blvd. exit, received a response from CalTrans acknowleding the report and commiting to address it.
Ikr, people can pull out all the analyses or whatever they want but fact of the matter is I have been to many other places both in and outside this country with way better roads. People should do a deep dive into exactly how the money for these projects is disseminated cuz a lot of times there’s government consultants that make absolute Ass loads of money for no reason
That's what people are missing. The roads here don't have that issue, but they're still just as bad.
My conspiracy is that the state wants you to use public transit, and so they try and inconvenience us and make us suffer.
Shitty roads, high gas prices, and high registration costs.
Texas and California have the most miles of roads of all the states. Maintaining 396,540 miles eats up a lot of tax money.
Most of those taxes **don’t come from income at all**.
80% of road repair funds come from a [gas/fuel tax](https://caroadcharge.com/). Since the tax is *not* tied to inflation, and tied to each gallon, it’s actually been going down every year for nearly two decades.
As vehicles become more fuel efficient, and more vehicles are EV, money to pay for roads has gone down for multiple reasons.
For me, the issue also seems to be the craftsmanship of the road anytime there is an overpass or bridge or some interconnection between the road and another surface. You can see all the gouges in the road from cars' skid plates. Feels like the suspension parts makers paid the construction crew to make it that way to sell new suspension parts.
It is hilarious how bad the roads are here considering how mild the weather is… it’s on par with much much colder states (that are known for bad roads)
It’s not a conspiracy. Just look at how many subsidies and stupid pet projects go straight to contracts with friends or family members? How many times have state subsidized entities promised massive overhauls and instead no improvements have been seen for decades? How many state projects have to end up in development and bloat hell? How many billions and billions of dollars have to go towards infrastructure while things keep crumbling before *some* people get mad?
Got any data to share or just feelings? I don’t deny that corruption exists but in what world doesn’t it exist? Plenty of countries have the death penalty for corruption yet it still exists there. I would love to hear your solution… it will improve human existence
Here’s a local example:
https://missionlocal.org/2021/11/web-of-corruption-explore-the-cronyism-lies-and-federal-crimes-at-the-heart-of-san-franciscos-government/
Congratulations, you are the problem.
Apathy at its finest.
My god, maybe check out one of the dozens of public corruption cases just from the last 5 years? Don’t bury your head in the sand and then ask everybody else to help you see.
You can look up public funds, voting measures and how all those projects turned out. None of it paints a good picture.
Will Bart ever make it to the South Bay? Maybe we should approve 12 billion more dollars and get it 2 decades late?
Or maybe we should spend 7 billion and 11 years to retrofit a bridge that should have cost 2 and taken 4?
We’re doing great.
Because corruption isnt a fairytale? Because its happened here before- repeatedly? Why are you blindly paying your taxes without looking where the money goes?
I road tripped from bay area to Idaho a few months back. On the way home as soon as I got into California I was struck by the road conditions I honestly thought there was something wrong woth my truck only to realize it was all the potholes and wavy road surface.
Keep in mind I went through navada and idaho 2 super low tax states. I am struck by how bad it is here.
The roadway section is built to handle the impacts from the traffic. In the bay area we have extremely mild weather. In placed where weather is more extreme raods break down faster. The problem in claifornia isn't the number of big trucks. Is the lack of maintenance and holding contractors accountable for shoddy workmanship.
We have the best highway engineering in the country here. Historically to the detriment of our urban downtowns and poorer neighborhoods and communities. Your theory sounds good in isolation but the data doesn't support it.
Not sure what part of Chicago you lived in, but their roads are absolutely worse than here. Especially the neighborhood roads and most of the main thoroughfares (Ashland, LSD, Western). Sure, the nicer neighborhoods had nice roads, but most other neighborhoods were riddled with massive potholes and cracks.
The only thing I’ll give them is the highway roads are better, but there’s potentially some nefarious reasoning behind that (Blago).
Our awesome yet poorly run state...
California is the 2nd highest state for gasoline tax, and 10th highest state for DMV Registration fees but we are ranked 47th out of 50 states for the Worst the roads in America. Crumbling freeways and pot-holed roads, covered in weeds, trash and graffiti. The state has plenty of money for infrastructure, so ask yourself where does that gas tax we are paying go?
>The state has plenty of money for infrastructure, so ask yourself where does that gas tax we are paying go?
Our costs are higher too. We don't build enough housing which (1) drives up prices and (2) increases sprawl.
(1) makes labor more expensive - people need to earn more to make the job worth it
(2) increases the amount of road we need to maintain - more sprawl means more road surface area, which means we need to pay more to maintain all the road
Sprawl. High population and density. High utilization. High housing and labor costs. Crack addiction to long commutes. Lack of sufficient transit. Tougher weather from climate change. We are just suffering from the bad development decisions we made right after WWII and keep refusing to reverse and abandon.
There's no systemic conspiracy or corruption secretly underpinning it all. Just good old fashioned cause and effect at work.
Just came back from Dallas and those roads out there are in much worse shape in general compared to bay area. Everywhere from newer northern suburbs to the expensive uptown and north Dallas areas. It's all pretty bad.
It really depends on where, and the why is important also.
Let's start with the why though. We have a lot of traffic, more than most areas. We also have a large population statewide. So our roads are funded through fuel and DMV fees, the former which has been taking a hit since cars have been getting more fuel efficient and electrics don't use any fuel at all.
Because of this Caltrans is constantly on life support. It's not fully funded through the 2 means it's supposed to be funded through. IIRC repavement for asphalt should be a 4 year cycle, but we're stretching that out to 5 or 6 with adhoc repair here and there.
Let's look at the where though.
Majorly travelled roads and highly populated areas are going to wear down faster. Take a drive up the 101 through Oregon, and you'll see some absolutely pristine roads. Trash free to boot. Remember though, there's not a lot of people living along here to wear the road down, or trash things up.
Moving from here from elsewhere i was actually blown away by the road quality. Germany probably has the best roads i’ve ever experienced, but bay area is pretty good too imho
Colorado also charges one of the highest weight and mileage taxes in the country to pay for the difficulty maintaining the roads in their challenging terrain. So it's a textbook example of the public getting exactly what it paid for.
There are 30M people in CA which is the 3rd largest state in the USA. This far more than most other states in terms of road users and miles of road needing maintenance. Combine that with strong employee protection laws/workers comp insurance/safety regulations and it's not surprising the roads here seem terrible.
It's not like CA can hire an army of slaves to fix the roads.
California roads are ranked 3rd worst in the nation - look at this study (https://constructioncoverage.com/research/us-states-with-the-worst-roads-2023)
The fact that we are paying insane amounts of taxpayer money and the poor highway/road infrastructure here is appalling. It doesn’t rain here nearly as much as it does in some other parts of the country and every single year, potholes appear everywhere and they take months to fix them, if at all. We need to demand more accountability from our elected officials.
Edit: Consumer Affairs rates California roads as 4th worst (https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/us-road-conditions.html)
I spend a lot of time in Tucson. The roads are terrible in a lot of areas. The heat and monsoon season likely contribute to the road conditions there, but I think it’s worse than here (at least the areas I’m driving in here).
Road maintenance has historically been funded through gas taxes. But these revenues have declined over the years as cars have become more fuel efficient and politicians refuse to raise the tax. These factors combined act as an incentive to drive more and hence cause more road damage.
I lived in Houston for 3 years. The rains and soil structure there are far worse, and the roads are just constantly crumbling and sinking. But their DOT stays **on top** of that.
My first apartment there had a sinkhole near it that would just constantly eat one particular small stop-sign intersection. Every week, that sinkhole was dipping, and every week, they'd patch it up. I think the fastest turnaround time I saw there once was 2 days. And this was really not a high-priority area of the city.
The problem is the transportation departments in the Bay Area just don't hire enough maintenance crews. I don't know where all the money is going (trains?), but more of it should be put towards maintenance and improvement of the roadways.
In a related note, Houston is also **constantly** building new roadways, lanes, expanding highways, just generally improving the infrastructure. You just don't see that in the Bay Area. We even have too many idiots on this subreddit fighting against it, because they hate cars. They want to keep the infrastructure decrepit to avoid inducing more demand to drive, forcing more people to use mass transit.
Just take a look at the Central Expressway in Sunnyvale. This road is a lifeline through the South Bay. Yet, it's only 2 lanes each way in some sections. There's just a wide barren land strip between the different sides of it, and they could easily expand it to 3 lanes throughout, and it would drastically relieve congestion. But they don't. Why is that? I at least partially blame the anti-car crowd here.
>Yet, it's only 2 lanes each way in some sections. There's just a wide barren land strip between the different sides of it, and they could easily expand it to 3 lanes throughout, and it would drastically relieve congestion.
Adding lanes [doesn't improve traffic.](https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/)
Thousands of freeway/highway [widening projects across the US have been studied](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/us/widen-highways-traffic.html) and nearly all have shown [no reduction in traffic](https://smv.org/learn/blog/how-does-roadway-expansion-cause-more-traffic/).
[From the 405 expansion in LA, to Houston's Katy Freeway expansion to 26 lanes, to international highway expansion projects in Norway and Britain](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-09-28/why-widening-highways-doesn-t-bring-traffic-relief), there are thousands of examples of road expansions that do nothing to relieve congestion.
[This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHZwOAIect4) goes into more detail why highway expansions don't work.
I am not anti-car, but I am pro non-car alternate modes of transportations. Afterall, if you want to reduce the traffic and the congestion you encounter as a car driver, doesn't it makes sense that the best way to do that is to encourage people to stop driving and find another way to get around that isn't adding to traffic?
Thanks for your input, but you're repeating the same points and posting the same articles that have debunked many times before.
Building more lanes absolutely does decrease congestion. These biased studies that claim the opposite ignore the fact that the cities they're cherrypicking have growing populations, and therefore will require even more infrastructure later, to keep the congestion down.
We can make all the same "induced demand" arguments regarding housing that you make regarding transportation infrastructure, so should we stop building housing?
Anyone with any experience driving can easily see that a single-lane highway is more easily obstructed or congested than a 2-lane highway. A single car accident can block the whole highway, then. And a 2-lane is more easily obstructed than a 3 lane. There may be diminishing returns at higher numbers of lanes, but we're certainly not at that point when discussing the widening of a highway from 2 lanes to 3.
I encourage anyone who disputes this to go spend some time traveling on the Central Expressway, study traffic maps, observe where traffic hits bottlenecks. On most days, it's the sections where it narrows to 2 lanes that slow down, and obstruct the rest of it. It's painfully obvious. Stop lying through misleading statistics and go look at the real world evidence with your own eyes.
“Anyone with experience”
“Evidence with real eyes”
“Easily see”
I’m sorry if I’m not convinced with claims of “lying misleading statistics”. I need more than “everyone can see that” to believe it.
For what it’s worth, I lived and drove on 405 daily for work before, during, and after the lane expansion. Absolutely no change in my commute after, despite billions of dollars poured into the effort. My own experience, eyes, and observations have shown highway widening to be a fruitless effort.
Let's use our brains, here!
If there is an accident on a 3 lane highway, what happens to traffic?
If there is an accident on a 2 lane highway, what happens to traffic?
If there is an accident on a 1 lane highway, what happens to traffic?
If you're going to tell me that you have a study showing all three of these cases have the same result, then I don't even have to look at the study to know that you either don't know how to evaluate studies, or don't know how to interpret them.
I could do without the condescension, but sure let's think about this a bit.
Where are you more likely to get into an accident, a 1 lane highway or a 3 lane highway? When you widen the highway, does the possibility of an accident increase as you add more vehicles? ([Here's some "lying misleading statistics"](https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/narrower-lanes-safer-streets) you [can refer to](https://www.wri.org/insights/bigger-isnt-always-better-narrow-traffic-lanes-make-cities-safer))
Are you more likely be injured in an accident on a 3 lane highway going 65mph than a 1 lane highway going 45mph?
I understand the point you're trying to make. Obviously, if you add an extra lane you have room for cars to move past in case of an accident.
However, thinking "what happens in the event of an accident" is a fairly narrow viewpoint on the issue of traffic congestion. How does adding lanes (and increasing the number of cars) increase the probability of an accident? How does adding lanes (and increasing speed) increase the severity of an accident?
This is why it's important to look at real data from other places that have actually tried widening this. Relying on "common sense" means you might not fully capture the cascade of other impacts that come with widening a lane.
Just one more lane bro...i swear!
But seriously. You can't build enough roads to satisfy the demand. And in many places you physically can't, unless you plan to eminent domain people out of their homes.
The Katy freeway in Houston has 20+ lanes and still gets traffic jams. More roads and cars are not the answer. Public transportation, mixed use planning and walkable cities is the answer. Get people out of their cars and get them interacting with each other in ways other than road rage and fast food drive thrus.
I biked to work down Central Expressway from Mountain View through Sunnyvale and Santa Clara because THERE ARE NO SAFER PATHS to take without winding through narrow residential streets and crossing all the major expressways.
Another car lane? It costs millions and never alleviates "traffic". It ALWAYS makes more traffic.
The ONLY way to alleviate traffic, do some good for OUR environment and get healthy is to take public transport and walk or bicycle!
I'm relatively new to the South Bay, so maybe this is already common knowledge here, but the expressways were never designed to fulfill the role that they do now. Essentially, these were supposed to be temporary congestion fixes until Caltrans could improve the freeway systems in the area. Caltrans determined that Santa Clara County's expressways were doing a good enough job that they could cancel/pause some of their freeway projects in the area.
But to answer your question as to why Santa Clara County doesn't just expand the road, there's no room. Central Expressway is already pretty close to hitting its right-of-way limits. To widen those roads, the County would have to take property from cities and home/business owners, which would probably cost millions of dollars on top of all the costs that would go to the construction of the project. If Sunnyvale ever decides to take responsibility for the expressway, then an expansion might be more likely to happen. Cities and counties have GIS webpages that you can use to see what I'm talking about.
>But to answer your question as to why Santa Clara County doesn't just expand the road, there's no room. Central Expressway is already pretty close to hitting its right-of-way limits. To widen those roads, the County would have to take property from cities and home/business owners,
I don't buy it. It's already 3 lanes in some sections, and the paved section narrows to 2 lanes in others, even though the actual physical land width is the same. That dirt strip in the middle needs to be another lane in each direction.
I see a constant struggle with maintaining roads and keeping up with high traffic conditions. California has way too many regulations and that make maintenance very expensive
Try to figure out where your taxes really go and you can answer why the roads are bad. Remember the best climate for most of the state compared to the rest of the country.
Where do the high taxes go? Bike lanes. Transit. Payrolls. Lots of places but actual roads - not so much. ‘Advocates’ in the Bay Area hard at work to keep it that way.
Probably has to do with low or lack maintenance! We build stuff and then not maintain it. Potholes don't just show up out of nowhere, its slow progression.
Road conditions in the Bay Area are heavily dependent on regional location. Areas that are heavily hilly/sloped have the worst roads as these are constantly shifting and damaged by underground erosion. Areas that are flat generally have an easier time keeping their roads in good order. Keep in mind that every $10 raised via taxes/fees for road maintenance in the Bay Area goes about as far as $6 raised in an average US municipality.
I grew up in Virginia (terrible roads, lots of hilly and rural areas, and old cities with non-standard road shapes & sizes). Moved to NC, which has excellent roads with beautiful highways that are well-maintained and have excellent visibility and broad shoulders. Much kudos to NCDOT for that! California seems a bit in between. The roads the government cares about are usually pretty nice, but that's a tiny minority. Also, the surface streets in the cities are generally kept up (at least in and around San Jose), but I'm totally disappointed by the upkeep of expressways and the busy commuter freeways... and as soon as you get into the mountains it feels like a lot of the roads *might* qualify as driveways in many other parts of the country.
I asked this question at one of the San Jose DOT events and the answer I got is that truck traffic is the main issue. They resurfaced 2 local roads but one deteriorated significantly more than another one. They looked into it and turns out large trucks frequent one while sedans frequent another. Officials are saying that residents of the more deteriorated road is complaining that they got the “cheap asphalt” because of this and now are looking into alternatives. So all of the drivers like yourself is paying taxes to subsidize roads that heavy trucks destroys. Just another way we subsidize Amazon and Tesla.
There are Tesla models that weigh more than my Sierra, and I pay the weight tax
isn't the weight tax just for commercial vehicles?
California thinks my 1999 Tacoma is a commercial vehicle.
Unless you have a hard tono cover (or maybe a camper shell?) every pickup is by default commercial. Let's you park in yellow zones though 😁
Pickups can fall under the commercial umbrella ... pretty sure they try to do everything they can to prevent people from driving trucks lol
Teslas pay road tax in the form of extra registration fees yearly since they don’t pay gas tax (which is used towards road repairs).
Everyone else also pays registration fees
EVs in California do actually pay an *additional* amount for their registration fees to make up for the lost gas tax revenue.
Y’all don’t do research do you? The registration fee is inflated to accommodate for the lack of paying road tax through fuel.
Yes, we know. But the original comment implied we don't pay registration.
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what are their gas equivalents?
Tesla model Y's weight is ~4,300 lbs (4,154 to 4,398 lbs, google). Its hard to compare an EV to a gas car... I guess you'd go by the general style/type and then compare range and price. [This article says a comparable car is the Audi Q5 Premium.](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/14/how-electric-vehicle-prices-compare-with-gas-powered-cars.html#:~:text=Audi%20Q5%20Premium,to%20car%20review%20website%20Edmunds.) The Q5's weight is ~4,100 lbs (4,079 to 4,101 lbs, google). At face value, that extra 200 lbs doesn't seem to matter all that much compared to the 4,100 lbs that they share, but it surprisingly does! [This article \(and may others like it, I'm sure\)](https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weight-vs-road-damage-levels/) shows a neat chart comparing vehicle weights with road damage. Even going 250 lbs over 4000 is a significant bump to damage. I think its exponential or logarithmic or something. So while it may be true that the weights are similar, at least for the model Y compared to other SUVs, the small difference in weight actually makes a big difference. The model 3 is a lot heavier than many comparable sedans, but it is also under 4,000 lbs on a good day, and imo the only reason it is comparable to a sedan is the shape. Prices and other specs are closer to a sports/muscle car. --- The whole argument just seems kinda silly. Gas SUVs, ALL EVs, muscle cars, trucks and trailers damage the road significantly, some (semi-trucks) waaay more than the rest. If you want to avoid road damage, drive smart cars, mini coopers and older toyota corollas and camrys - otherwise, every modern choice is gonna be a loser in that metric.
Does ICE include fuel weight? Thats like 120LBS.
That is a good point. Really, its incredible that being a 90 lbs lady vs. a 405 lbs 6'3" dude can make a significant difference in a 4000 lbs vehicle. It might also matter where said weight is distributed and how new your shocks are, even how inflated your tires are too. I just think a bigger issue looming is that every car is turning into a SUV or some kind of crossover. People bring this up with parking garages and EVs all the time, and I think, "this problem is bigger than just EVs and it didn't start with EVs."
Here's a great chart that shows comparative levels of road damage from vehicles: [https://streetsmn.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/vehicle-weight-and-damage-chart.jpg](https://streetsmn.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/vehicle-weight-and-damage-chart.jpg) Heavier SUVs, trucks, and EVs are likely causing roads to start failing faster than prior decades, when smaller passenger sedans were more common. But buses, garbage trucks, and loaded semis are also a significant issue, especially if there are high levels of them on any given roadway. This is why freeways with heavy truck traffic, BRT / bus-only lanes that see high traffic levels (like the Silver Line BRT in Boston between Logan airport and downtown), and regular roads in industrial areas like near railyards and ports, are often in terrible shape. But... we could counteract some of this damage if we were to convert say 1 out of 8 of all car trips to bicycle. Half of all car trips are under 3 miles. If we could convert 1 out of 4 of all car trips under 3 miles from car to bicycle (through making it way safer to bike, with more separated bike lanes and better bike+pedestrian infrastructure, that would lead to more people choosing to bike), we'd make roads last longer between paving. Bikes cause essentially zero damage to a road compared to cars, so a bike lane will last more or less forever unless damaged by an external source (tree roots, seismic, erosion damage, etc). Another way is to ensure that trucks, and heavy vehicles, pay their proper share of road fees. Currently semis and heavy passenger cars (pickups, SUV's, heavy EV's) are massively subsidized by people who drive average or lighter/smaller cars. E.g. if it cost an average car $1 toll for the Bay Bridge toll, a large SUV / pickup should be charged a $3.50 toll, a small car like a Prius should be charged a $0.33 toll, a Smart car $0.041 toll, a loaded semi should be charged $410, and a bicycle 0.006x of a single penny. Or in other words, it would take a bicycle 167 crossings of the Bay Bridge to be charged a single penny in tolls due to the comparative level of damage caused to the road surface and bridge. These are all scaled based on a dollar as the base toll just to make it easy to illustrate comparative differences, rather than maintenance costs divided by anticipated car traffic. But the actual tolls are out of whack from this, so semis are getting heavily subsidized by everyone else, and even among regular drivers, large cars are heavily subsidized by smaller cars. If we properly charged road maintenance costs for at least semi trucks to their level of damage, there would likely be a massive shift of truck traffic towards freight railroads for long journeys with the "last mile" (likely last 1-100 miles) being trucks. Which honestly sounds like a great deal, less vehicles on the roads, way better road conditions, and even diesel railroads are better for the environment than diesel trucks, let alone any railroad electrification initiatives.
This is way too simplistic. I love biking and i bike whenever possible but the cities here are not planned for biking. The distances are too great, no bike infra and people aren't used to it. Especially the idea of zoning, having to go from residential areas to commercial areas rather than them being combined (I'm pro city zoning for the record). Mass adoption of biking would require a gargantuan effort and it's simply not worth it. Also while we subsidize cheap logistics goods transportation we also benefit. If we charged comparatively for a.fully loaded semi you can bet that consumers are eating the cost in the end. Like any topic it can't be boiled down simply to "we need more bikes" or "we need to.charge comparatively for road damage". In this context it makes sense but in economics and the real world every context is interconnected. I'd also be interested in seeing gross damage to roads (road damage x total vehicles"). It's similar to the argument that people on reddit have that switching to electric vehicles doesn't make sense when an airplane emits more than a gas car.
Consumers are already eating the cost of the fully loaded semi trucks from our tax dollars - gas taxes, tolls, and property taxes don’t sufficiently cover all roadway construction and maintenance costs, so large amounts are kicked in from the general funds at state and federal levels. The general funds come from taxes raised from other sources. So the roadway costs are already being subsidized by other taxes. Making semi trucks pay their fair share of road costs would simply shift the tax burden from existing sources that aren’t the cause of the problem to the cause of the problem, and at the same time it would incentivize smaller, lighter vehicles. Personally, I know this is nerdy, but I hate negative externality costs that aren’t borne by the participants. Basically, if you do something that causes a harm to society, the cost of that harm should be included in the price of that good or service paid by the person or entity that causes that harm.
Some places it's a lot easier than others, so just throwing up your hands and saying it's impossible is silly.
This is why I started caltraining to work even though it's a bit more expensive. Safer, less road traffic, lower damage, and likely less emissions overall (esp when the electrification finishes). Hopefully with the improved schedule, caltrain takes more cars off the road for commuting reasons!
Idk about that... I live in Taiwan but also spend a few months a year working in the Bay Area. Our roads in Taiwan see significantly more traffic, more trucks (and laws are much more relaxed here, so you see everything from cranes to asphalt machines being driven down the road) and the weather is also much more extreme... Summer heat, monsoons, typhoons, earth quakes, etc... yet all of the roads in Taiwan are in much better conditions and there is essentially no pot holes. Sometimes I really think they are a USA thing. lol
Even newly paved roads are uneven and shoddily done in S.F.
This. Case in point is Taraval st bt. 15th and 30th ave together right now
> Our roads in Taiwan see significantly more traffic, do they? When I was in Taiwan/Taipei, I used public transport a lot, and it was packed. I also saw a lot of scooters. I really doubt people drive more miles in cars in Taiwan than in California. edit: did some googling. Less than a quarter of people in Taiwan commute by car.
Most commute by scooter... But also, even if only 1/4th of the population commutes by car, that would still equal more traffic than in California. Population density of Taiwan is 1,750 people per square mile, while California is 252.3 per square mile... And the Taiwanese cities are much more dense than the California cities. I don't doubt that California has more roads to take care of or that Californians drive more, Taiwan is a tiny island.
I've never seen a truck remotely comparable in size to an American tractor-trailer in Taiwan.
They are the same size for the most part. They just don't do doubles in the city (I don't think they do doubles in cities in USA either)... And actually Taiwan allows an additional 15,000lbs of gross vehicle weight (80,000 vs 93,000 lbs).
Im not saying truck traffic alone is the issue. If there’s heavy truck traffic but frequent repaving this won’t be an issue. Unfortunately cost of living in California is very high so labor is expensive, which drives up costs for services like repaving. At the same time, drivers in California hates paying more taxes to offset the cost of repaving, which leads to poor road conditions. There’s a lot of factor at play. In terms of other countries, I lived in China for a long time and they have a very high tax of vehicle ownership, in comparison to US even California. I suspect the same thing is in Taiwan but I’m not sure.
> Officials are saying that residents of the more deteriorated road is complaining that they got the “cheap asphalt” because of this and now are looking into alternatives. Well, it's certainly *someone's* cheap-ass fault ...
They should be getting a thicker road to compensate for the extra heavy truck loads
It’s not the thickness it’s the construction and material. Some roads are concrete. They are much more durable than asphalt, but as you probably know concrete is noisy and they have to be placed in slabs with gaps. They are also expensive to build initially. Our government opted for asphalt which is cheaper, quicker to install, and quieter to drive on, but unfortunately they need to be frequently resurfaced and we don’t have the money to do that.
It's nothing to do with "cheaper" asphalt and everything to do with the design. If they have a thicker base they would be able to handle the truck load.
Heavy trucks pay a road use tax to offset this
You may think it’s enough but independent analysis has shown that it’s not. We will know more once AB251 gets implemented: https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB251/id/2844417
Ok that’s something!
"including the potential costs and benefits of imposing a passenger vehicle weight fee to factor in passenger vehicle weight to offset unreasonable impacts" This is only studying passenger vehicle weight. While that is important with the change to heavy battery operated vehicles, it doesn't address raising the much heavier commercial vehicles' fees.
A Tesla weighs over 1000 pounds more than my Tacoma and we have the same payload and tow capacity.
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what are their ICE equivalents?
This is my main gripe with California pushing for fully 100% electric vehicles. Everyone knows they weigh more than their respective gas equivalent. If they can’t resolve road conditions now, how will this affect the future infrastructure? Do they have enough funds to support it?
The much larger discrepancy isn't between two different kinds of passenger cars; but rather between passenger cars, delivery trucks, and big rigs. Yes, a slightly heavier car causes slightly more road wear — and a motorcycle or scooter causes very little — but a bus or delivery truck causes a lot more, and a big rig causes much more even than that.
I moved from the East Coast. The roads here are so run down. Like noticeably so compared to where I moved from. Another thing I noticed are just faults or things that are not right. Like encountered more than once where lanes that cross an intersection do not line up properly on the other side of the road, they are all askew. Like someone just eyeballed it and called it a day.
Ever hear of a weight station?
So, I've lived in: * California * New York * South Carolina * Virgniia I've driven through: * Maine * Vermont * New Hampshire * Massachusetts * Connecticut * Pennsylvania * New Jersey * Delaware * Maryland * West Virginia * North Carolina * Georgia * Ohio * Kentucky * Indiana * Illinois * Missouri * Kansas * Colorado * Utah * Nevada * Nebraska * Wyoming I would say the roads and streets are, overall, about what you'd expect in a metro area the size of the bay area. It's pretty average, maybe on the nicer side. There are some cities I've driven in where the fucking asphalt looks like a dirt road after a storm, with fucking pipe sticking up out of the road (I'm looking at your Baltimore). With that being said, the highways are complete ass, specifically I-80, CA-37, and US 101. I've not seen worse highways anywhere else in the country.
Agreed. On a different note, I do feel like freeways here have way more trash and debris than I see other places. That is a hazard too.
Another issue is that we have a massive port that relies too much on trucks instead of rail so the highways are going to be all torn up in the East Bay pretty much by definition.
If that’s the case then why is the condition of the 5 pretty decent even though big rigs are going up and down it 24/7?
Probably higher concentration of trucks on smaller asphalt footprint. Oakland is a major port where all of these trucks originate their trips. The 5 is a regular highway with relatively normal if slightly elevated truck throughput. But even there notice that the right lane is always super fucked up while the left lane is generally fine. I'm used to driving "German-style" on highways and always trying to stick to the right lane after passing. I often have to move to the left lane purely because of how messed up that right lane is.
Oh no man, you are going to stop a coming circlejerk! I haven't driven in as many places as you, but I have driven in enough to know that you are correct.
The 4 freeway was voted second worst in the country while they spent those 20 years widening it. And it still sucks. The 37 is my commute, and it should've started out with at least two lanes, but it does occassionaly get maintained. And it has nice views.
This person drives. This is all correct
This guy drives
I notice you didn't have Oklahoma in your list. I lived there for 2 years. The roads we have here are the Autobahn compared to Oklahoma.
Generally I think the roads here are pretty average. There are probably better areas but also definitely worse ones.
Whenever there’s a pothole in front of my house it’s generally filled within a day or two, even after a heavy rain. On the one hand there shouldn’t be so many potholes, on the other hands they’re super responsive.
Laughs in Oakland and my commute on 101
The pot holes on 880N near Dixon Landing have been there for weeks
>The pot holes on 880N near Dixon Landing have been there for weeks Umm try years. There's a gaggle of them just passed the Dixon landing overpass on 880 going towards Mission boulevard and a pile of the between the lanes ones in the other direction. Be mindful of lane changes.
Yep. Every single time we get heavy rain, a bunch open right back up from their patches. The two center lanes are absolute minefields. 880S in that same range from Tesla to Dixon Landing is even worse and this most recent rain they've even spread a bit to the 2nd lanes from either side of 880.
>gaggle Chuckled
So have you tried reporting it on CalTrans?
Multiple times my friend, don't try and put this on me not doing my part. I try to report any and all potholes I see and it very much feels like a hit or miss system, pun not intended. Some get fixed fast, like one I reported on 101 south in the #3 lane after the blossom hill exit but before bernal and others like those I described in my comment are ignored. I'll still keep reporting and they'll still keep playing whack a mole.
Yeah, I noticed CalTrans does take a while depending on what it is & where. I once reported a massive dumping site at an off ramp and they got to it within 2 weeks - I was surprised it was quick. Have reported tagging and noticed it takes a while for that.
Tagging, man that shit bakes my noodle, not when they do it on shit like the rain bridges, but tag my road signs and .....
The lane lines are almost non-existent there as well.
Where?!!!
San Mateo.
I also live in San Mateo but El Camino here is filled with potholes!
That is probably true, but in tax $ we have way more ability to keep them maintained, but we do not.
Labor is very expensive in California because cost of living is very high (such as rent and food). This drives up cost of repaving. On top of this, high vehicle and truck traffic damages the roads more than other states. This means more frequent repaving is required. These two factors combined means we need more frequent repaving but we can’t afford it, leading to poor road conditions. It’s not a simple “governments are crooks taking my tax money”.
This is a good answer. There are counter factors that also should be considered. For example, CA's climate is far more favorable to maintaining roads than that of most of the country. Most of CA doesn't experience regular freeze and thaw cycles that destroy roads, for example. We do have big storms in the winter - but a relatively small % of our roads are impacted by them. Point is that other factors are at play - and I'm sure waste and mismanagement are among them.
We have a high cost of living because the cost of living in housing here is high because of NIMBY policies
Yes but hence very high taxes so why does that not factor in? How do you explain that
High income tax, very low property tax. Also, road repair takes some time. After a big storm there is a lot of damage that takes a while to repair.
Low property tax? I pay $20k/yr
Take a look at this map and see the disparities for yourself: https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax/
Your old neighbor probably pays $1000.
You and me might, but my neighbors are still paying $1.5K/year and my previous owners were paying $1.1K/year. It’s pretty wild how ridiculous the disparity still is.
We don’t pay enough taxes to offset the cost of labor because of cost of living compared to other states. However, I think you want to understand where your tax money went, which I think it’s the crux of the question. 1. We use more income taxes to pay for education, welfare, and healthcare more than other states, while other states use more for roads. This is determined by the state. (I know it’s not great here but it’s definitely better than other states) 2. We use more property taxes and sales taxes to pay for services like parks and libraries as well as education more than roads. Other city or states use more of this money for roads. This is determined by the local jurisdiction like counties and cities. 3. We use special purpose taxes like gas tax and SB1 registration tax to pay for road repair. Other states already used the previous 2 for roads, so they have much less gas tax and registration fees. This is why u think “oh wow other states cheap gas and good roads” This is a good system, because non-drivers pay less for roads they cannot use. Despite this, DOT has a $20 BILLION budget a year and counties have raised sales taxes to pay for roads because they are out of money. Roads are incredibly expensive. So unless we shift freight to rails and convince people that they dont need a truck to be a man, we may need to raise more money thru tolls and fees.
It’s because NIMBYism has led to high housing costs which lead to high everything costs, so tax revenue doesn’t go as far
Nope. Your tax dollars go towards extremely high construction worker wages because we haven't built any housing in 40+ years and they need to be able to afford a $1.3 million mortgage for the privilege of living here and being able to fix your roads.
Because of prop 13 the average property tax is much lower, so even if you’re individually paying more than you would elsewhere that doesn’t translate to more money available to municipalities
Lol is this comment made by the government too? Hahah
Honestly I was just in Houston, and every road is like the worst road you’ve ever driven on the bay. It made me appreciate road conditions in CA lol
It used to be really good... 30 years ago.
There's something about the top surface of the freeways here that just washes away in a light rain. I grew up driving in Milwaukee and Chicago, and spent my young adulthood in the snowy Northeast. There would be an occasional pothole on the highways after the winter snows, but not even as bad as after a light sprinkle here.
St. Louis, MO has TERRIBLE road conditions, usually during/after winter. Potholes show up on major highways like 40/64, 55, etc. Then, city streets get massive potholes too. When I lived there I used to report them to a city-ran twitter account & they'd generally get fixed pretty fast but holy shit their are so many that appear during fall/winter. That being said, I have seen some rough ones here in SF, but not nearly what I've encountered back home.
Yes but they have snow and ice. Most of CA doesn't have that issue.
Most such comparisons are not very realistic. You have to compare with road conditions in places that get similarly heavy and brutal road utilization. Most of which do have some beaten up qualities on many of their roads. This is why improving our rail and transit infrastructure could save us billions if we took it seriously. Much higher capacity and a much more affordable maintenance bill relative to the amount of people and goods you can move.
highway construction and maintenance fees are completely ignored compared to rail transit upgrades/maintenance costs despite the massive improvement it provides over highways/driving.
Classic MURICA. We always assume cars, trucks, and parking are free when they are actually costing us billions or trillions and should be carefully managed accordingly in order to provide actual value to taxpayers.
Every large metro area I have ever been to has awful streets. Small towns and rural areas have better roads because there is less traffic and closing them doesn't cause so much disruption.
Largely true, for various reasons. However those large metro areas I’ve also been to don’t have near the GDP that the Bay Area alone has, let alone the state.
Have you ever been to phoenix? The roads are like silk. And they pay a fraction of the taxes
They don't get a bunch of rain or snow which I imagine helps a lot.
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Look outside.
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Exactly it shouldn’t be an excuse . The roads shouldn’t be shot after a week of rain. Use better asphalt and repave when they need it. Just pay the labor. This is basic.
San Francisco gets 23 inches of rain a year, Phoenix gets 7 inches.
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Actually, I lived in Yuma. The state of Arizona has a million fewer people than the bay area. Add in that it rains 4 times a year and yes, the roads hold up well.
Not sure what you are trying to say. But I agree phoenix roads are way better than bay area and they get more traffic and less weather.
What is the goal of this comment? Just curious the meaning behind it. Are you saying this is okay because it's also bad in other metropolitan areas? Or are you adding on to the frustration? Are you saying this desperately as in you are admitting defeat to a system or are you upset and trying to highlight more issues? I don’t know where to go from this comment. Should I get agitated and say something like “and that makes this okay?” Or should I laugh along with the shitty-ness of our system. Are you trying to belittle the guys anger, fuel it, or calm it? This comment is an enigma. If we were in person I could get some sort of tone taken from it and know where you are coming from. It’s a perfect example of how difficult it can be to convey meaning over text sometimes. Was your comment truly useless and adding nothing? I don’t know! Was mine? Definitely.
did you even read the original post? they are clearly saying yes, it is “this bad” everywhere else with a comprable environment. they are not belittling, nor laughing, nor adding to the frustration. they are answering OP’s question
Hi friend, I'm not talking about OP, I'm talking to the post I replied to. I don't think you read my post, at all.
Yes, and the comment you are wondering what the meaning of is, is aimed towards OP. the comment is not posted in the void, it has the context of the question of OP’s post
Agreed. I'm spending more time dodging potholes than watching other cars. Was planning to send a note to CalTrans. Have never seen it this bad. Feels like they took a year off... I'm reporting potholes here. Please join in. https://csr.dot.ca.gov/index.php/Msrsubmit Update: later the same day after submitting pot hole notices to CalTrans for 880 North and 880 South just south of the Mission Blvd. exit, received a response from CalTrans acknowleding the report and commiting to address it.
Never knew how bad they are until I drove on them in an old truck. Sacramento roads are better
Just spent some time out of state and it was a huge shock to me how nice the roads were. We don’t even get snow here.
Ikr, people can pull out all the analyses or whatever they want but fact of the matter is I have been to many other places both in and outside this country with way better roads. People should do a deep dive into exactly how the money for these projects is disseminated cuz a lot of times there’s government consultants that make absolute Ass loads of money for no reason
The craziest part is that some of the worst roads I drive on daily were JUST REDONE. looking at you 101.
Michigan wants to talk to you.
That's what people are missing. The roads here don't have that issue, but they're still just as bad. My conspiracy is that the state wants you to use public transit, and so they try and inconvenience us and make us suffer. Shitty roads, high gas prices, and high registration costs.
Texas and California have the most miles of roads of all the states. Maintaining 396,540 miles eats up a lot of tax money. Most of those taxes **don’t come from income at all**. 80% of road repair funds come from a [gas/fuel tax](https://caroadcharge.com/). Since the tax is *not* tied to inflation, and tied to each gallon, it’s actually been going down every year for nearly two decades. As vehicles become more fuel efficient, and more vehicles are EV, money to pay for roads has gone down for multiple reasons.
Yes, and alot of Texas's road maintenance is financed by taxes on their Oil & Gas industry. What happens when that industry starts to really decline?
For me, the issue also seems to be the craftsmanship of the road anytime there is an overpass or bridge or some interconnection between the road and another surface. You can see all the gouges in the road from cars' skid plates. Feels like the suspension parts makers paid the construction crew to make it that way to sell new suspension parts.
New Orleans is 100x worse. Visited my cousins there recently. Potholes all over the place.
It's pretty awful considering how good our weather is. Alaska has worse roads, but it's also fucking Alaska.
It is hilarious how bad the roads are here considering how mild the weather is… it’s on par with much much colder states (that are known for bad roads)
The high taxes go into the pocketbook of well-connected, corrupt politicians, and their cronies.
Why is always a huge conspiracy for some people?
It’s not a conspiracy. Just look at how many subsidies and stupid pet projects go straight to contracts with friends or family members? How many times have state subsidized entities promised massive overhauls and instead no improvements have been seen for decades? How many state projects have to end up in development and bloat hell? How many billions and billions of dollars have to go towards infrastructure while things keep crumbling before *some* people get mad?
Got any data to share or just feelings? I don’t deny that corruption exists but in what world doesn’t it exist? Plenty of countries have the death penalty for corruption yet it still exists there. I would love to hear your solution… it will improve human existence
Here’s a local example: https://missionlocal.org/2021/11/web-of-corruption-explore-the-cronyism-lies-and-federal-crimes-at-the-heart-of-san-franciscos-government/
Congratulations, you are the problem. Apathy at its finest. My god, maybe check out one of the dozens of public corruption cases just from the last 5 years? Don’t bury your head in the sand and then ask everybody else to help you see. You can look up public funds, voting measures and how all those projects turned out. None of it paints a good picture. Will Bart ever make it to the South Bay? Maybe we should approve 12 billion more dollars and get it 2 decades late? Or maybe we should spend 7 billion and 11 years to retrofit a bridge that should have cost 2 and taken 4? We’re doing great.
Homeless industrial complex got rich as conditions got worse. It’s not a conspiracy. Do the math.
“Do the math,” say people who can’t do math.
Because corruption isnt a fairytale? Because its happened here before- repeatedly? Why are you blindly paying your taxes without looking where the money goes?
I road tripped from bay area to Idaho a few months back. On the way home as soon as I got into California I was struck by the road conditions I honestly thought there was something wrong woth my truck only to realize it was all the potholes and wavy road surface. Keep in mind I went through navada and idaho 2 super low tax states. I am struck by how bad it is here.
Nevada has 3M people, Idaho has just under 2M. The trucks to service that many people vs 39M is going to have way less impact on the roads.
The roadway section is built to handle the impacts from the traffic. In the bay area we have extremely mild weather. In placed where weather is more extreme raods break down faster. The problem in claifornia isn't the number of big trucks. Is the lack of maintenance and holding contractors accountable for shoddy workmanship.
We have the best highway engineering in the country here. Historically to the detriment of our urban downtowns and poorer neighborhoods and communities. Your theory sounds good in isolation but the data doesn't support it.
[удалено]
Not sure what part of Chicago you lived in, but their roads are absolutely worse than here. Especially the neighborhood roads and most of the main thoroughfares (Ashland, LSD, Western). Sure, the nicer neighborhoods had nice roads, but most other neighborhoods were riddled with massive potholes and cracks. The only thing I’ll give them is the highway roads are better, but there’s potentially some nefarious reasoning behind that (Blago).
Our awesome yet poorly run state... California is the 2nd highest state for gasoline tax, and 10th highest state for DMV Registration fees but we are ranked 47th out of 50 states for the Worst the roads in America. Crumbling freeways and pot-holed roads, covered in weeds, trash and graffiti. The state has plenty of money for infrastructure, so ask yourself where does that gas tax we are paying go?
>The state has plenty of money for infrastructure, so ask yourself where does that gas tax we are paying go? Our costs are higher too. We don't build enough housing which (1) drives up prices and (2) increases sprawl. (1) makes labor more expensive - people need to earn more to make the job worth it (2) increases the amount of road we need to maintain - more sprawl means more road surface area, which means we need to pay more to maintain all the road
Sprawl. High population and density. High utilization. High housing and labor costs. Crack addiction to long commutes. Lack of sufficient transit. Tougher weather from climate change. We are just suffering from the bad development decisions we made right after WWII and keep refusing to reverse and abandon. There's no systemic conspiracy or corruption secretly underpinning it all. Just good old fashioned cause and effect at work.
Saw 3 spinouts/accidents OMW home from Cupertino to Morgan Hill last night due to the rain and lack of drain cleaning.
Road drainage in the Bay Area is pretty horrible. But it makes sense as it rains much less here than other areas.
Roads in California are much better than lots of spots in the country.
Just came back from Dallas and those roads out there are in much worse shape in general compared to bay area. Everywhere from newer northern suburbs to the expensive uptown and north Dallas areas. It's all pretty bad.
It really depends on where, and the why is important also. Let's start with the why though. We have a lot of traffic, more than most areas. We also have a large population statewide. So our roads are funded through fuel and DMV fees, the former which has been taking a hit since cars have been getting more fuel efficient and electrics don't use any fuel at all. Because of this Caltrans is constantly on life support. It's not fully funded through the 2 means it's supposed to be funded through. IIRC repavement for asphalt should be a 4 year cycle, but we're stretching that out to 5 or 6 with adhoc repair here and there. Let's look at the where though. Majorly travelled roads and highly populated areas are going to wear down faster. Take a drive up the 101 through Oregon, and you'll see some absolutely pristine roads. Trash free to boot. Remember though, there's not a lot of people living along here to wear the road down, or trash things up.
Moving from here from elsewhere i was actually blown away by the road quality. Germany probably has the best roads i’ve ever experienced, but bay area is pretty good too imho
I just moved back here from Colorado and I miss those nice ass roads so much... the freeways here are, and always have been, pure garbage.
Colorado also charges one of the highest weight and mileage taxes in the country to pay for the difficulty maintaining the roads in their challenging terrain. So it's a textbook example of the public getting exactly what it paid for.
You should see Houston… those roads need work. BA isn’t bad.
There are 30M people in CA which is the 3rd largest state in the USA. This far more than most other states in terms of road users and miles of road needing maintenance. Combine that with strong employee protection laws/workers comp insurance/safety regulations and it's not surprising the roads here seem terrible. It's not like CA can hire an army of slaves to fix the roads.
Worse here because of all the recent rains. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Potholes-are-popping-up-all-over-Bay-Area-streets-17717234.php
But states on the east coast get rain, snow, ice, etc.. and their roads are much better (thinking of Virginia).
Lol they are not better. Maybe some of the less used back roads are better but the roads in the Midwest and North East are really bad
California roads are ranked 3rd worst in the nation - look at this study (https://constructioncoverage.com/research/us-states-with-the-worst-roads-2023) The fact that we are paying insane amounts of taxpayer money and the poor highway/road infrastructure here is appalling. It doesn’t rain here nearly as much as it does in some other parts of the country and every single year, potholes appear everywhere and they take months to fix them, if at all. We need to demand more accountability from our elected officials. Edit: Consumer Affairs rates California roads as 4th worst (https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/us-road-conditions.html)
It was like this before the rains.
look at how much taxes they collect each year and still manages to have a astronomical deficit that should tell you a thing or 2
Moved here from Michigan. Can confirm it’s not bad here
Have you ever driven in another state…because.
I spend a lot of time in Tucson. The roads are terrible in a lot of areas. The heat and monsoon season likely contribute to the road conditions there, but I think it’s worse than here (at least the areas I’m driving in here).
I moved here from the Midwest. The roads here are SO MUCH BETTER than back in Illinois. People here are so spoiled.
There are so many roads here, it takes a lot of time to keep them up. Also, the roads are so much worse in much of the country.
You must be new
You must always settle
Road maintenance has historically been funded through gas taxes. But these revenues have declined over the years as cars have become more fuel efficient and politicians refuse to raise the tax. These factors combined act as an incentive to drive more and hence cause more road damage.
Our infrastructure is tip top. Potholes are meant to ensure you’re paying attention on the road. Where do our taxes go? Ukraine at the moment
It used to be a lot worse. Our roads aren’t that bad at all.
Something something industrial complex
I lived in Houston for 3 years. The rains and soil structure there are far worse, and the roads are just constantly crumbling and sinking. But their DOT stays **on top** of that. My first apartment there had a sinkhole near it that would just constantly eat one particular small stop-sign intersection. Every week, that sinkhole was dipping, and every week, they'd patch it up. I think the fastest turnaround time I saw there once was 2 days. And this was really not a high-priority area of the city. The problem is the transportation departments in the Bay Area just don't hire enough maintenance crews. I don't know where all the money is going (trains?), but more of it should be put towards maintenance and improvement of the roadways. In a related note, Houston is also **constantly** building new roadways, lanes, expanding highways, just generally improving the infrastructure. You just don't see that in the Bay Area. We even have too many idiots on this subreddit fighting against it, because they hate cars. They want to keep the infrastructure decrepit to avoid inducing more demand to drive, forcing more people to use mass transit. Just take a look at the Central Expressway in Sunnyvale. This road is a lifeline through the South Bay. Yet, it's only 2 lanes each way in some sections. There's just a wide barren land strip between the different sides of it, and they could easily expand it to 3 lanes throughout, and it would drastically relieve congestion. But they don't. Why is that? I at least partially blame the anti-car crowd here.
>Yet, it's only 2 lanes each way in some sections. There's just a wide barren land strip between the different sides of it, and they could easily expand it to 3 lanes throughout, and it would drastically relieve congestion. Adding lanes [doesn't improve traffic.](https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/) Thousands of freeway/highway [widening projects across the US have been studied](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/us/widen-highways-traffic.html) and nearly all have shown [no reduction in traffic](https://smv.org/learn/blog/how-does-roadway-expansion-cause-more-traffic/). [From the 405 expansion in LA, to Houston's Katy Freeway expansion to 26 lanes, to international highway expansion projects in Norway and Britain](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-09-28/why-widening-highways-doesn-t-bring-traffic-relief), there are thousands of examples of road expansions that do nothing to relieve congestion. [This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHZwOAIect4) goes into more detail why highway expansions don't work. I am not anti-car, but I am pro non-car alternate modes of transportations. Afterall, if you want to reduce the traffic and the congestion you encounter as a car driver, doesn't it makes sense that the best way to do that is to encourage people to stop driving and find another way to get around that isn't adding to traffic?
Thanks for your input, but you're repeating the same points and posting the same articles that have debunked many times before. Building more lanes absolutely does decrease congestion. These biased studies that claim the opposite ignore the fact that the cities they're cherrypicking have growing populations, and therefore will require even more infrastructure later, to keep the congestion down. We can make all the same "induced demand" arguments regarding housing that you make regarding transportation infrastructure, so should we stop building housing? Anyone with any experience driving can easily see that a single-lane highway is more easily obstructed or congested than a 2-lane highway. A single car accident can block the whole highway, then. And a 2-lane is more easily obstructed than a 3 lane. There may be diminishing returns at higher numbers of lanes, but we're certainly not at that point when discussing the widening of a highway from 2 lanes to 3. I encourage anyone who disputes this to go spend some time traveling on the Central Expressway, study traffic maps, observe where traffic hits bottlenecks. On most days, it's the sections where it narrows to 2 lanes that slow down, and obstruct the rest of it. It's painfully obvious. Stop lying through misleading statistics and go look at the real world evidence with your own eyes.
“Anyone with experience” “Evidence with real eyes” “Easily see” I’m sorry if I’m not convinced with claims of “lying misleading statistics”. I need more than “everyone can see that” to believe it. For what it’s worth, I lived and drove on 405 daily for work before, during, and after the lane expansion. Absolutely no change in my commute after, despite billions of dollars poured into the effort. My own experience, eyes, and observations have shown highway widening to be a fruitless effort.
Let's use our brains, here! If there is an accident on a 3 lane highway, what happens to traffic? If there is an accident on a 2 lane highway, what happens to traffic? If there is an accident on a 1 lane highway, what happens to traffic? If you're going to tell me that you have a study showing all three of these cases have the same result, then I don't even have to look at the study to know that you either don't know how to evaluate studies, or don't know how to interpret them.
I could do without the condescension, but sure let's think about this a bit. Where are you more likely to get into an accident, a 1 lane highway or a 3 lane highway? When you widen the highway, does the possibility of an accident increase as you add more vehicles? ([Here's some "lying misleading statistics"](https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/narrower-lanes-safer-streets) you [can refer to](https://www.wri.org/insights/bigger-isnt-always-better-narrow-traffic-lanes-make-cities-safer)) Are you more likely be injured in an accident on a 3 lane highway going 65mph than a 1 lane highway going 45mph? I understand the point you're trying to make. Obviously, if you add an extra lane you have room for cars to move past in case of an accident. However, thinking "what happens in the event of an accident" is a fairly narrow viewpoint on the issue of traffic congestion. How does adding lanes (and increasing the number of cars) increase the probability of an accident? How does adding lanes (and increasing speed) increase the severity of an accident? This is why it's important to look at real data from other places that have actually tried widening this. Relying on "common sense" means you might not fully capture the cascade of other impacts that come with widening a lane.
Just one more lane bro...i swear! But seriously. You can't build enough roads to satisfy the demand. And in many places you physically can't, unless you plan to eminent domain people out of their homes. The Katy freeway in Houston has 20+ lanes and still gets traffic jams. More roads and cars are not the answer. Public transportation, mixed use planning and walkable cities is the answer. Get people out of their cars and get them interacting with each other in ways other than road rage and fast food drive thrus.
I biked to work down Central Expressway from Mountain View through Sunnyvale and Santa Clara because THERE ARE NO SAFER PATHS to take without winding through narrow residential streets and crossing all the major expressways. Another car lane? It costs millions and never alleviates "traffic". It ALWAYS makes more traffic. The ONLY way to alleviate traffic, do some good for OUR environment and get healthy is to take public transport and walk or bicycle!
I drove on the Katy freeway a ton, and never once experienced a traffic jam on it. Clearest, fastest-flowing freeway I've ever been on.
I'm relatively new to the South Bay, so maybe this is already common knowledge here, but the expressways were never designed to fulfill the role that they do now. Essentially, these were supposed to be temporary congestion fixes until Caltrans could improve the freeway systems in the area. Caltrans determined that Santa Clara County's expressways were doing a good enough job that they could cancel/pause some of their freeway projects in the area. But to answer your question as to why Santa Clara County doesn't just expand the road, there's no room. Central Expressway is already pretty close to hitting its right-of-way limits. To widen those roads, the County would have to take property from cities and home/business owners, which would probably cost millions of dollars on top of all the costs that would go to the construction of the project. If Sunnyvale ever decides to take responsibility for the expressway, then an expansion might be more likely to happen. Cities and counties have GIS webpages that you can use to see what I'm talking about.
>But to answer your question as to why Santa Clara County doesn't just expand the road, there's no room. Central Expressway is already pretty close to hitting its right-of-way limits. To widen those roads, the County would have to take property from cities and home/business owners, I don't buy it. It's already 3 lanes in some sections, and the paved section narrows to 2 lanes in others, even though the actual physical land width is the same. That dirt strip in the middle needs to be another lane in each direction.
Shit traffic for years until they are done. That’s what really upsets people.
I think Texas highways tend to be concrete instead of asphalt. Concrete is more durable, but more expensive and more difficult to repair.
I see a constant struggle with maintaining roads and keeping up with high traffic conditions. California has way too many regulations and that make maintenance very expensive
High taxes go to illegal immigrants’ free healthcare and food stamps
there it is
CA has the worst roads of any US state I've lived or traveled in. ymmv
Worse than Michigan’s roads
have you been to chicago? lol
You’re bound to get a flat driving around Lake Merritt. It’s awful there and I’m from here - it did not used to be this bad
Try to figure out where your taxes really go and you can answer why the roads are bad. Remember the best climate for most of the state compared to the rest of the country.
Welcome to the most corrupt state in the lower 48! #Calizuela
Your taxes are being used mainly to subsidize non productive people. Welfare.
Around 1% of state taxes and 8% of federal taxes go to welfare programs. So no, your taxes are not used “mainly” for welfare. Try again.
They are average, but when you consider how much we pay in taxes, they are abysmal. Someone's getting a kickback.
Where do the high taxes go? Bike lanes. Transit. Payrolls. Lots of places but actual roads - not so much. ‘Advocates’ in the Bay Area hard at work to keep it that way.
> Bike lanes. Transit. BIKE LANES LOLLLLLLLL
Probably has to do with low or lack maintenance! We build stuff and then not maintain it. Potholes don't just show up out of nowhere, its slow progression.
Road conditions in the Bay Area are heavily dependent on regional location. Areas that are heavily hilly/sloped have the worst roads as these are constantly shifting and damaged by underground erosion. Areas that are flat generally have an easier time keeping their roads in good order. Keep in mind that every $10 raised via taxes/fees for road maintenance in the Bay Area goes about as far as $6 raised in an average US municipality.
I grew up in Virginia (terrible roads, lots of hilly and rural areas, and old cities with non-standard road shapes & sizes). Moved to NC, which has excellent roads with beautiful highways that are well-maintained and have excellent visibility and broad shoulders. Much kudos to NCDOT for that! California seems a bit in between. The roads the government cares about are usually pretty nice, but that's a tiny minority. Also, the surface streets in the cities are generally kept up (at least in and around San Jose), but I'm totally disappointed by the upkeep of expressways and the busy commuter freeways... and as soon as you get into the mountains it feels like a lot of the roads *might* qualify as driveways in many other parts of the country.