California’s highways are in bad shape and getting worse every day, with a backlog of deferred maintenance totaling tens of billions of dollars.
Gov. Jerry Brown says we should be spending $8 billion a year on repairs, but are actually spending less than a third of that, which means the backlog is growing by nearly $6 billion.
Oddly, however, the repair program Brown is offering to the Legislature would average just $3.6 billion a year, and much would be spent on transit or shared with local governments. All in all, highways would get just $16.2 billion over 10 years, a fraction of the unmet maintenance needs.
Even were the Legislature to go along, therefore, the backlog would continue to grow, meaning the highways would become even rougher and more dangerous. We might even displace No. 1 New Jersey as having the nation’s absolutely worst roadways.
View Article