To experience America’s crumbling infrastructure firsthand, look no farther than San Francisco and Oakland — ranked this week by a transportation research group as being home to the worst roads of any large urban region in the country.
Now, a half-dozen years into Gov. Jerry Brown’s futuristic vision of carbon-free transportation, California is encountering even more potholes along the electric highway — obstacles born from both practicalities and politics. Consumers, put off by high costs and concerned about limited range, just aren’t buying into the state’s ambitious aims. Hybrid electric and fully electric cars have been stuck at only 3 percent of new cars sold in the state. Undaunted, the state intends that by 2025, zero-emission cars will make up 15 percent of California’s new car fleet — a fivefold increase. . . California has lagged in expanding ownership much beyond wealthier coastal areas. Research shows that higher-income neighborhoods are buying these cars at 10 times the rate of lower-income areas — a gap that’s widening.
But 13 years later, and just four years from the goal date, San Francisco continues to throw away huge amounts of garbage. The city’s waste has averaged 1,463 tons every workday over the past year, according to Recology, the city’s trash collector. There’s no penalty for not meeting the target other than, of course, a swelling landfill that’s bad for the environment and a big dent in San Francisco’s reputation as one of the greenest cities in the world.
All three Democratic proposals include some form of higher taxes or fees, such as boosting the gas tax rate or adding annual road-user surcharges for electric vehicles that don’t pay into the gas tax fund. Republicans have balked at permanent taxes while California revenues have been on the rise. They want concessions like changes to the state’s complex environmental review process and revisions to how the start awards transportation contracts.
More than half of Bay Area residents think the region will experience a significant economic downturn within the next five years, according to a survey released Tuesday by the Bay Area Council.
The San Francisco Bay Area Renters’ Federation — which goes by the name SFBarf — is suing the city of Lafayette, demanding that it resurrect a scrapped plan to build high-density housing on a 22-acre knoll of Deer Hill Road, just north of Highway 24. It’s the first legal challenge in what SFBarf has promised will be a “Sue the Suburbs” campaign to push places like Lafayette to help the Bay Area build its way out of the shortage of housing.
Berkeley employs about 8,500 staffers, from custodians to administrators. Faculty members will not be affected. Dirks said the reductions will be done in part through attrition and did not mention layoffs.
The nationwide scope of the problem was reflected Monday in a letter the U.S. Justice Department sent to chief judges and court administrators in every state. It said too many people are being subjected to heavy fines for minor crimes, and penalized or even jailed when they can’t pay.
“Not In My Back Yard” is a phrase that’s been used quite often in California over the last 30 years, usually as a precursor to challenge, block, delay or kill construction projects across the state. And NIMBY activists’ bludgeoning tool of choice is the California Environmental Quality Act. Like NIMBY, it’s better known by its acronym: CEQA. . . “It (CEQA) has been abused in this state for 30 years by people who use it when it has nothing to do with an environmental reason,” said Carol Galante, faculty director of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley, and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
. . . San Francisco has passed more laws than any other major city to improve the lives of low-wage workers such as dishwashers, bussers, line cooks and waiters; Berkeley, Oakland and other Bay Area cities are not far behind. . . How much more expensive is dining out becoming? To get a sense, The Chronicle examined 20 years’ worth of menus from restaurants that hold steady spots on the annual Michael Bauer’s Top 100 Restaurants list.` After tracking 22 signature dishes or prix-fixe menus from 14 restaurants, we found that prices have risen, on average, 26 percent since 2010 and 52 percent since 2005 — up 7.5 percent in the last year alone.
California has come a long way to dig itself out of budget deficits, but the state remains on shaky ground due to nearly $400 billion in unfunded liabilities and debt from public pensions, retiree health care and bonds, financial analysts say.
The initiative was sold to voters in 2012 as a way to generate billions for green energy projects at California schools and create 11,000 jobs each year. The Associated Press reported in August that less than $300 million had been distributed to schools and only 1,700 jobs created in three years.
PG&E’s average monthly bill for residential customers in 2016 will jump 7 percent to $147.21, the utility reported Wednesday. That follows a 6 percent rise at the start of 2015 and marks the highest increase since 2006. . . More bill increases will likely follow.
Buoyed by the roaring tech industry, unemployment in the Bay Area has dropped to pre-recession levels while parts of Southern California have bounced back more slowly.
This year, the state allocated just 20 percent of the water requested by California water districts. For the second straight year, the federal government cut off most valley water districts entirely — including the Westlands Water District, which supplies the farms around Mendota.