Bumpy Roads to the Future

Some of the best-surfaced roads in California are in Yosemite National Park, where a $178-million federal appropriation to repair damage from the 1997 New Year’s flood allowed them to be fixed properly.

The asphalt is so new, it nearly gleams. What a contrast, as one enters the park, from the worn condition of California 41, the state highway from Fresno that leads to Yosemite’s southern entrance.

If only the state government could repair its roads as nicely. Sacramento is the primary source, through taxes collected from highway users, of funds for road resurfacings in our cities, as well as out in the country.

To call the condition of the preponderant share of these highways and streets unsatisfactory is a serious understatement. We are simply not keeping up with today’s requirements, much less tomorrow’s.

California, according to projections by the U.S. Census Bureau, will have a population of 49.3 million in 2025, 18 million more than in 1995.

Last month, another study predicted that six Southland counties--Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, Riverside, San Bernardino and Imperial--will have about 43% more people, or a new total of 22.3 million, by 2020.

The city of Los Angeles will have a population of 4.89 million, 34% higher than now.

Orange County is forecast to be up 25%, to 3.24 million, and Ventura County up 31%, to 932,300. The rate of increase in the Inland Empire counties will be even greater, 104.5% in Riverside and 81.5% in San Bernardino. Their population will exceed 2.8 million people each.

We are going to be in daily anguish unless our roads are in a satisfactory state, even assuming some alternative transport comes to exist.

Yet in the city of Los Angeles alone, the director of the Bureau of Street Maintenance, Gregory Scott, recently declared that there is a $1-billion shortfall for resurfacing work just to catch up with past road decay over the next 10 years.

Scott said his bureau should be resurfacing 265 miles of streets a year to meet its goal of renewing each street every 25 years. Yet it is doing only 150 miles a year now, and its average over the past 18 years has been just 140.

Often, the bureau must scrounge for special money to get things done. Its Broadway resurfacing and reconstruction project is being financed largely by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and not surprisingly, it’s taken a long, long time to get underway.

Scott was “chief coordinator” responsible for drawing up plans for the street 13 years ago. In February, he said the project would begin by April. Now, it is supposed to start in July or August and to take at least two years.

The bureau expects to spend $30 million to $35 million this year on resurfacings in the city. It would have to get $100 million more in state funds in each of the next 10 years to catch up with what it should be doing, Scott said.

It’s not every day you call a city department with questions, only to be told things are actually worse than you thought.

But that’s what happened the day I sought out Bob Hayes, the spokesman for the Los Angeles Department of Public Works, for answers to one of L.A.’s annoying civic problems: why streets being resurfaced are stripped of their top pavement and, then, not repaired for weeks--or even months.

I mentioned some examples, such as Bundy Drive in West Los Angeles, where a contractor took a year to complete the project.

Hayes interjected, “What about Main near Olympic? That also is very bad.”

And this is just Los Angeles, which has little more than 10% of the state’s population. If improvements aren’t being funded here, is the state doing any better elsewhere?

Jim Drago, chief spokesman for Caltrans, sent me a statement on an $8.3-billion transportation spending program for the next six years. Most of it is for new projects, not for refurbishing old ones.

The statement contained some happy-talk quotes from Gov. Pete Wilson.

Wilson spoke of “infrastructure improvement we have laid during my governorship” and remarked:

“As we enter a new decade and a new millennium, we will be able to look back on the 1990s as a time of building and renewal. As our predecessors did in the 1940s and ‘50s, we are building today for an even better California in the future.”

Let’s see. Earl Warren was governor in the 1940s and early ‘50s. Pat Brown became governor in 1959. Is Wilson comparing his policies to those of these master builders?

He must be joking.

In such mundane matters as resurfacings, we are not maintaining, much less sufficiently building, for the future.

But that may be the way many Californians, financially beleaguered by their credit card balances and their desire for more of the personal good life, want it.

I had a call a few weeks ago from a man fuming over a report that Caltrans was planning to reopen part of California 39, which until a rockslide closed it 20 years ago linked Azusa and the Angeles Crest Highway.

This is outrageous, he said. Government is squandering taxpayer funds once again.

On request, Caltrans sent me two articles on the project. They said $2.9 million has been approved to reopen half of a 4.4-mile gap in the road by 2004. The rest of the work will have to wait.

It doesn’t sound all that extravagant to me. I once took a hike with the kids on the Pacific Crest Trail nearby. Due to the road closure, we had to hike a considerable distance just to reach the trail.

I’m just silly, I guess. To me, visiting Yosemite on a newly resurfaced road, or being able to more conveniently use the Angeles Crest Highway is part of the personal good life, even if it does involve taxpayer funds.

Ken Reich can be contacted with your accounts of true consumer adventure at (213) 237-7060, or by e-mail at ken.reich@latimes.com