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I am a road enthusiast. I have driven on almost every single major road in CA Nevada and especially the deserted "no one goes there" type roads. I also take int

by tn13 10y ago

I am a road enthusiast. I have driven on almost every single major road in CA Nevada and especially the deserted "no one goes there" type roads. I also take interest in history of roads. California has been sitting ducks on some really important road proposals or last so many years despite the deaths they have been causing. My suspicion is that politicians want to push trains and other larger projects where they might get kickbacks instead of upgrading existing roads. Here are some observations: 1. Highway 1 seems to be under repair all the year for last 3 years. 2. Highway 152 is the only major road that connects SJ with I-5. despite this it is one lane for a large part. It has very high fatality and traffic jam rate. Decades have passed since government planned to broaden it. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Route_152 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Route_152] 3. Panoche road. Not sure why this road exists. But since it does then making it an expressway could have helped create an alternative to 152 reducing traffic and accidents. 4. Then there is Route 130 that connections bay area to I-5. Several times it was proposed that this route be widened as an alternative to 152 but it never went ahead. I once saw a car fall several feet below the road just because he got spooked to see me coming in opposite direction. It is that desolated.

_delirium 10y ago
Every part of CA I've lived in has had a ton of money going into constant road construction, so this isn't quite my impression. The state's budget in this area is huge, in the billions annually. When I lived in L.A., they built an entire new, 6-lane freeway near where I lived. To relieve congestion on the 10, they just built a second parallel freeway, the 210, that doubled up the route! L.A. has so many freeways now that you can just treat them as arterial roads. If you miss your freeway interchange, no need to backtrack, just keep going and take the next freeway. I also lived for some years south of SF, and from that vantage point it seemed like a ton of money was being put into roads too. Highway 17 (San Jose to Santa Cruz) has had hundreds of millions poured into widening and safety upgrades. There was just a few years ago a major tunnel-boring project on Highway 1 to replace the "Devil's slide" portion between San Francisco and Half Moon Bay with new tubes put right through the mountain. And the continual freeway-ification of US-101 south of Gilroy has had money going into it just about every year. And heck, although much of it dates back a bit earlier, the Valley is the only place I've ever lived that has not only the normal three tiers of: interstate freeways, U.S. expressways, and state expressways, but also county expressways, like Montague Expressway and San Tomas Expressway. And yet doesn't have even halfway decent public transit (Caltrain barely counts).
- DrScump 10y ago
  That last paragraph comes full circle. When Santa Clara County opted out of BART, money that would have gone to BART was instead partly used for the expressways. Southwest Expressway is the most puzzling, running just from Stokes (by Bascom) to 280. Dunno if it was originally planned for more. Tons of money goes into VTA rail to serve very few passengers. Its routes were chosen for political reasons rather than actual demand. (Note that the MV line runs right by where Lockheed Martin is/was, and its primary Congressional advocate as head of the Transportation Committee, Norm Mineta, was a Lockheed executive after he quit Congress mid-term after losing his chairmanship.) Now, I often get to wait at the VTA crossing of Central Expressway for empty trains to cross. Yay.
- tn13 10y ago
  As per Federal government reports California has second worst quality of roads after DC. [1] Neither LA nor SF Bay area has any good roads. I think your are judging them by lower standards compared to population density, commute distance etc. It is barely sufficient. Just look at this [2] data. California's rate of building new roads is significantly lower, expenditure stagnant and quality is bad. This despite the higher gas taxes. The money clearly is going somewhere else. 1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/25/why-driving-on-americas-roads-can-be-more-expensive-than-you-think/?utm_term=.29039be53542 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/25/why-d... 2. http://www.accessmagazine.org/articles/fall-1993/why-california-stopped-building-freeways/ http://www.accessmagazine.org/articles/fall-1993/why-califor...
  - _delirium 10y ago
    The article you link at #2 comes up with a pretty different explanation for freeway construction stall: > The principal cause of declining freeway development was the dramatic rise in construction and maintenance costs I.e. California would have had to significantly increase its gasoline tax, in line with the increases in construction costs, to fund continued 1960s-scale freeway development, but didn't do so: The gas tax today is approximately the same in real terms as it was in 1960 (it was 4.7¢/gal then, which is roughly 40¢/gal in 2016 dollars). Well that, or find a way to bring construction costs back down. A small portion of the money diverted to rail doesn't really move the needle on the big-picture here.

by tn13 10y ago

_delirium 10y ago

Every part of CA I've lived in has had a ton of money going into constant road construction, so this isn't quite my impression. The state's budget in this area is huge, in the billions annually. When I lived in L.A., they built an entire new, 6-lane freeway near where I lived. To relieve congestion on the 10, they just built a second parallel freeway, the 210, that doubled up the route! L.A. has so many freeways now that you can just treat them as arterial roads. If you miss your freeway interchange, no need to backtrack, just keep going and take the next freeway. I also lived for some years south of SF, and from that vantage point it seemed like a ton of money was being put into roads too. Highway 17 (San Jose to Santa Cruz) has had hundreds of millions poured into widening and safety upgrades. There was just a few years ago a major tunnel-boring project on Highway 1 to replace the "Devil's slide" portion between San Francisco and Half Moon Bay with new tubes put right through the mountain. And the continual freeway-ification of US-101 south of Gilroy has had money going into it just about every year. And heck, although much of it dates back a bit earlier, the Valley is the only place I've ever lived that has not only the normal three tiers of: interstate freeways, U.S. expressways, and state expressways, but also county expressways, like Montague Expressway and San Tomas Expressway. And yet doesn't have even halfway decent public transit (Caltrain barely counts).

DrScump 10y ago
That last paragraph comes full circle. When Santa Clara County opted out of BART, money that would have gone to BART was instead partly used for the expressways. Southwest Expressway is the most puzzling, running just from Stokes (by Bascom) to 280. Dunno if it was originally planned for more. Tons of money goes into VTA rail to serve very few passengers. Its routes were chosen for political reasons rather than actual demand. (Note that the MV line runs right by where Lockheed Martin is/was, and its primary Congressional advocate as head of the Transportation Committee, Norm Mineta, was a Lockheed executive after he quit Congress mid-term after losing his chairmanship.) Now, I often get to wait at the VTA crossing of Central Expressway for empty trains to cross. Yay.
tn13 10y ago
As per Federal government reports California has second worst quality of roads after DC. [1] Neither LA nor SF Bay area has any good roads. I think your are judging them by lower standards compared to population density, commute distance etc. It is barely sufficient. Just look at this [2] data. California's rate of building new roads is significantly lower, expenditure stagnant and quality is bad. This despite the higher gas taxes. The money clearly is going somewhere else. 1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/25/why-driving-on-americas-roads-can-be-more-expensive-than-you-think/?utm_term=.29039be53542 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/25/why-d... 2. http://www.accessmagazine.org/articles/fall-1993/why-california-stopped-building-freeways/ http://www.accessmagazine.org/articles/fall-1993/why-califor...
- _delirium 10y ago
  The article you link at #2 comes up with a pretty different explanation for freeway construction stall: > The principal cause of declining freeway development was the dramatic rise in construction and maintenance costs I.e. California would have had to significantly increase its gasoline tax, in line with the increases in construction costs, to fund continued 1960s-scale freeway development, but didn't do so: The gas tax today is approximately the same in real terms as it was in 1960 (it was 4.7¢/gal then, which is roughly 40¢/gal in 2016 dollars). Well that, or find a way to bring construction costs back down. A small portion of the money diverted to rail doesn't really move the needle on the big-picture here.