Road to nowhere: How California has spent billions but failed to keep roads up to standard
Tori Richards
This is the third of a three-part Washington Examiner series on California’s aging infrastructure and its impact on the lives of residents after years of failed spending programs and neglect from elected officials.
California’s roads are struggling to stay up to standard — despite the state spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on every mile of asphalt.
California spent $206,924 per mile that year to maintain its roads, three times what taxpayers doled out in Texas. California also has the highest gas taxes in the nation at 56 cents, an amount that increases every year to match inflation.
But drivers stuck in one of the state’s infamous traffic-jams aren’t likely to know it.
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Billions of dollars have been spent on upkeep for the crumbling infrastructure, yet California ranks almost dead last in cost-effectiveness and condition of its roads and bridges, a 2021 report from the Reason Foundation revealed.
“Put simply, the state does many things poorly and nothing well,” the think tank’s report said. It ranked the state 45th in the nation when averaging 13 categories including pavement condition, disbursements per mile, and fatality rates.
The taxes were given a huge boost in 2017 when Senate Bill 1 passed, adding an extra tax of 12 cents a gallon. This was meant to add $5 billion annually to the repair fund, a move that was opposed by Republicans.
“When you look at what happened with storms that ravaged California, it put infrastructure front and center. You see it crumbling,” said Republican Assemblyman Vince Fong, who sits on the Assembly Transportation Committee. “As we go into the new budget year, we are going to have to prioritize road infrastructure and make sure we dedicate the funds for repair and building.”
The state has allocated $16 billion since S.B. 1 passed and will need another $123 billion to fix about 45% of the projects on its list, according to data compiled by the Los Angeles Times. Yet the program is facing a $6 billion shortfall to complete many of the projects promised to voters.
Poor infrastructure also adds to the state’s notorious commute times, and the Reason Foundation placed it 43rd in the nation in a survey of normal commute times. California drivers waste an average of 14.75 hours a year due to congestion.
“The state has the worst of both worlds: high spending and poor roadways,” the report said.
In 2021, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) released a “California Comeback Plan” with an expenditure of just $2 billion toward highway infrastructure from a $38 billion budget surplus and an extra $25 billion in federal funding.
Sky-high bridges are a common sight in congested California as freeway expansion over the years has necessitated going higher, not wider. This is earthquake country, and the state has implemented stricter building codes than most states to keep structures from collapsing.
Despite receiving record-breaking funds, the number of bridges in good condition has continued to decline.
The state has spent $121 million of gas tax funds to repair 89 bridges. Yet the Federal Highway Administration classifies 1,536 bridges as structurally deficient. That number is up from 1,204 deficient bridges in 2016, the Los Angeles Times reported. California has 25,763 bridges.
“We are well behind in keeping up with infrastructure, repairs, and upgrades,” said Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) of Northern California. “We hear the reports coming back that California gets a grade C, D, or F” in survey reports.
California politicians like to spend money on green projects such as bike lanes or high-speed rail but don’t put a lot of effort into trying to upgrade the existing infrastructure, LaMalfa said.
“California costs so much more to do anything per mile because of union control and red tape. It’s just harder to get things built here,” he said. “Nobody in my caucus wants to give money to high-speed rail. It’s a boondoggle.”
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Caltrans told the Washington Examiner that it regularly assesses the seismic performance of bridges on the state highway system to ensure that they were built or retrofitted to updated standards that “perform sufficiently during an earthquake to prevent collapse.”
“Following the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, Caltrans screened and prioritized all state-owned bridges to identify seismically deficient bridges,” said Caltrans spokesman Edward Barrera.
“This review was the basis for a seismic retrofit program that resulted in the retrofit of more than 2,200 bridges. In addition, all state highway system bridges built after 1990 have been designed to modern-day seismic standards.”