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Roads in the Bay Area were the worst in the nation and accounted for high costs to drivers in 2016, according to a report released by a national nonprofit on Oct. 17.
The staff at The Road Information program (TRIP), a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit focused on transportation issues, used highway data to rank more than 100 urban areas that the group determined to have the worst roads.
The region defined as the San Francisco-Oakland urban area, meaning those two cities and others in the surrounding area, came out on top of that list. The report says 71 percent of major roads in the area are in poor repair, according to pavement data from the Federal Highway Administration.
Because of that, drivers in the area lost on average more than $1,000 annually when their vehicles depreciated, needed maintenance and used more fuel.
San Jose ranked second in the nation in the TRIP report, with 64 percent of roads in bad shape. The average San Jose driver lost $983 annually, according to the report.
Bay Area cities also topped a similar list of mid-sized urban areas. The area of Antioch was first, with 57 percent of roads in poor condition, according to TRIP. A close second was Concord, at 56 percent.
Metropolitan Transportation Commission spokesman John Goodwin said the MTC is responsible for some of the roads surveyed in the report. The others are managed by Caltrans.
Goodwin said that in general, California roads need work. “All around the Bay Area, really all around California, we have streets, roads and highways that are suffering from years of neglect,” he said.
A year-old gas tax has been helping to pump more money into road maintenance, but there’s still a ways to go, Goodwin said. The tax itself is in danger of repeal with the presence of Proposition 6 on the state’s Nov. 6 ballot.
TRIP used data from 2016 because it was the most recent data available, according to the report.
The nonprofit is sponsored by insurance agencies, equipment makers and labor unions, among others, according to its website. The full report can be found here.
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TRIP has recently issues a series of reports detailing the costs to drivers of road conditions, congestion, etc.
What they do not report is the impact of these conditions on driver behavior.
Does anyone not believe that driver frustration with bad roads and traffic impacts how we drive? How may times do you need to witness cars running red lights to understand it’s a significant threat to safety?
Our road infrastructure is inadequate and in poor shape. The impacts of these conditions ripple throughout our daily lives. We desperately need local leaders to step up to finding solutions.
I guess they haven’t driven in the Chicago area in a while, then. Midwestern roads are full of potholes and in constant repair, due to salt and the weather.
101 sucks, but the rest seems pretty good to me.
Gee! Governor Moonbeam sez everything is hunky dory here in his version of Camelot. We shouldn’t worry about the worst roads, the most crowed roads, the failing schools, the highest percentage of people living below the poverty line of any state in the nation, the highest housing costs, the highest gasoline cost, the highest cost of living of just about any place in the world the highest electric ity cost and among the highest total tax take of any place in the nation and a seriously underfunded public employee retirement giveaway that needs about $1.6 trillion to make it feasible. Just keep hummmmmmmoing the mantra – its all good -its all good- its all good. Just keep voting for the same inept politicians and it will all be good.
!!NOT!!
Stan: taking a thread on our terrible roads to personal insults and every other subject under the sun…
Bad day at the office?
@home state of mind: You assume that internet trolls *have* offices.
Okay, maybe those in Russia, but otherwise…
What a fortunate time for this article to be published. Could it be to defeat Proposition 6, the ballot measure to repeal the gas tax?
Sadly, the 12 cent per gallon does not guarantee the funds will spent on roads. It can be spent on the high speed train to nowhere and other non-road expenses.
And who is fixing our roads? Caltrans.
How many times do you see someone working on a road project and three people with orange vests, hard hats and clipboards standing around watching the one worker. No wonder it costs four times as much to build a mile of freeway in California than in Texas. Instead of thinking that Caltrans is in the business of building and fixing roads it makes much more sense that Caltrans is in the business of employing people. When Caltrans ever finishes anything, it a benefit.
I was in the auto repair business for years. It is fantasy to claim our awful roads cause $1,000 in car damage annually. Ask yourself how much you spend on broken and warn out suspension parts each year? How much you spend of tires that are damaged by potholes? The claim that roads cause $1,000 per year in vehicle damage doesn’t pass the smell test. False fact.
We don’t need another gas tax, we need a more efficient road department. What happened to the old road tax we have been paying forever? The State Legislator diverted it into the general fund never to be seen again. Now we need a new tax because the revenue from the older one had disappeared into the big dark hole of bureaucracy.
I am voting YES on Proposition 6.
To: Home state of mind & More of the same
Your comments are pretty much what one could expect from those who can’t find any error in the message so instead you choose to attack the messenger. Invest some time and find out for yourself the true state of our state. Its a mess and we need some one besides a confrontational dreamer to begin to bring some sanity to correcting serious deficiencies. Kicking the can down the road can be done by any populist politician. We need a real leader who will step up and identify the serious weaknesses in the many governmental activities of our state and do something corrective besides just add another tax. Please try to address the facts and justify the sorry state of affairs if you truly believe that all is good.
“Please try to address the facts”
Says the guy who is far off topic he didn’t even obliquely refer to the topic (roads.)
Open a new thread on your love for your boy Cox, with your prediction on the over/under on his loss to Newsome – 15 points?
Have a great California day!
Stan, Stan, Stan…hasn’t anyone told you that none of us here want your boy Putin to be supreme ruler here?
You can find TRIP on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/user/1971trip?feature=mhee
Just arrived in the last 24 hours. What timing!
Vote Yes on Prop. 6 and NO on Measure W.
Raise taxes on heaviest cars and trucks.
And don’t listen to posters who’ve lied about their commitment to term limits.
Hickey can’t help himself — if it’s bad for society at large, he’s for it. Which explains his infatuation for Betsy DeVos…
Fix the roads!!!!
My buddy does auto repair, he says his business is soaring.
Potholes, inability to handle vehicles well through trashed roads, etc.. He thinks the roads are keeping him in business.
We need to improve our roads, transit and other infrastructure.
It’s embarrassing.
Kitchen Table costs and bills
He is quoting false facts.
Don’t believe everything you read. Check what you, the reader, spend personally on road damage to your car. $1000/year is a Trump-ism exaggeration.
“I was in the auto repair business for years”
So your anonymous anecdotal fable is to be believed, yet don’t believe me when I say our roads are embarrassing?
Uh, sure. You da (wo)man.