California’s Meandering Highways : Senate bill seeks an investigation into Transportation Department’s level of efficiency

Nearly two years ago Californians approved two bond issues to round out a $18.5-billion program of highway and transit construction designed to help fend off encroaching gridlock. Big as the fund seemed, it was no more than a good down payment on a task as overwhelming as building California out of its traffic jams. But it should have been enough to give transportation a shove in the right direction. So why is there so little to show for it?

A report this year by state Legislative Analyst Elizabeth G. Hill said that the state Department of Transportation finished only slightly more than two-thirds of the work it was supposed to complete in the fiscal year that ended last July. New figures are not yet in, but they are not likely to be better.

Even at that, the estimate of work actually completed may be too high. As Jerry B. Epstein of the California Transportation Commission said last month, management of Caltrans is so fragmented that it is easy to hide projects that are behind schedule.

Perhaps as early as next week, the state Senate will be asked to approve an independent audit of the structure of what was once the best collection of highway designers and builders in the United States.

The bill authorizing the audit asks, in effect, what went wrong and how it can be fixed. The legislation is sponsored by Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) and supported by the chairmen of the transportation committees of the Senate and the Assembly--Sen. Quentin L. Kopp (I-San Francisco) and Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar). The sooner there are answers to the questions it asks the better.

Caltrans’ own history as the best in the business is part of the current problem: The business has changed, but the department has not changed with it. After World War II, what the state needed was an agency that could design the finest highways and freeways and just build them. But California’s population has doubled since highway programs followed that pattern, leaving less room for new highways.

In urban areas--Southern California chief among them--the big question is no longer where to put the next highway but what kind of transportation will best move millions of commuters. Because such a question is best dealt with at the local or regional level, the engineering bureaucracy in Sacramento too often is all but irrelevant in arriving at a valid answer.

Even if that were not the case, Epstein says, the “many layers” of committees reviewing design projects both in Sacramento and the 12 Caltrans district offices “can be too cumbersome.”

The search for solutions should get under way as soon as possible.