It’s one thing to hear that California is looking at a $20 billion-plus budget shortfall next year. It’s another to realize just what isn’t getting done in the state because of the financial mess.
A report released this morning by TRIP, a national transportation research group, said the state’s crummy roads are costing California drivers about $40 billion a year from traffic accidents, higher vehicle operating costs and just plain delays from highway gridlock.
The road troubles will do far more than inconvenience drivers stuck on Southern California and Bay Area freeways.
“With an unemployment rate of 12.5 percent … and with the state’s population continuing to grow, California must improve its system of roads, highways, bridges and public transit to foster economic growth, avoid business relocations and ensure the safe, reliable mobility needed to improve the quality of life for all Californians,” the report stated.
It’s easy to dismiss the grim picture of California’s transportation future as overheated rhetoric from a group with a dog in the fight for state funds, since the think tank is financed with money from labor unions and “businesses involved in highway and transit engineering and construction.” Building roads is always a good idea to the highway lobby.
But the numbers are hard to dispute, especially the ones coming out of Sacramento.
Caltrans, for example, estimated in 2007 that it was going to take $5.5 billion a year from 2009 to 2018 to operate and rehab the state highway system. Right now, though, it looks like only about $1.5 billion a year is going to be available for that highway works, which leaves $40 billion in unmet needs.
Pressure on those roads – and the congestion it brings – is only going to get worse. Traffic on California roads jumped 22 percent from 1990 to 2008 and another 20 percent boost in highway miles traveled is expected by 2025.
Commercial trucking is anticipated to grow 28 percent by 2020, which is good news for the economy, but bad news for congestion and the crumbling roadways.
In 2007, 35 percent of California’s major roads were found to be in poor condition, second worst in the country behind New Jersey. Those roads have obvious troubles with potholes, significant ruts and other problems that drivers can easily see – and feel. While those roads need serious reconstruction work, there are also plenty of California highways in mediocre condition, which can be fixed by resurfacing.
Doing that regular maintenance makes a difference: it costs about four times as much to rebuild a road as it does to resurface one.
But when highway money is short, the available cash is reserved for the worst of the worst and roads that are good enough get ignored until disaster looms.
The obvious solution is more highway money. But with that looming $20 billion shortfall, the Legislature isn’t looking for places to boost spending.
And when it comes time to split that ever-smaller budget pie, who wins and who loses? In the zero-sum game of budgeting, cash that goes to highway construction and repair is money that doesn’t go to health care, state parks, children’s programs, state workers, higher education, etc, etc, etc.
Transportation California, a highway lobby-funded group, successfully pushed 2002’s Prop. 42, which directly earmarked state gas tax funds for transportation programs. According to Mark Watts, the group’s executive director, “a new and reliable state revenue source (is) essential to provide relief to the motoring public.”
Good luck finding one – or convincing the Legislature to provide it. Within moments of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger presentation of the state’s 2010-11 budget next month, interest groups across the state are going to be firing out memos pointing out exactly why they should be immune from the budget ax that’s going to fall.
Transportation advocates can make telling arguments about the importance of highway funding to California’s residents and the state’s economy. Problem is, those other interests groups have plenty of good arguments of their own.
Which means, of course, that it will be up to the Legislature to decide. And we all know how well that’s worked in recent years.
John Wildermuth is a longtime writer on California politics.