If you’re a frequent reader of this space, you know we don’t have much good to say about Caltrans. But you have to excuse us for not jumping in with both feet on the latest mass beating the transportation agency is taking.
The latest brouhaha is over a $250,000 study on how to allocate maintenance dollars, which Caltrans shelved as soon as it was completed.
Don’t get us wrong: The report by State Auditor Elaine Howle’s office is quite damning. It shows there are no standards set on the minor work done by Caltrans’ maintenance division — things like filling potholes, repairing guardrails, cleaning up graffiti and the like — and no independent follow up on how well or even whether the work was done.
The process of identifying needed repairs is haphazard, a hit-and-miss process that resulted in tens of thousands of service requests being ignored. It found that the same kinds of work on the same kinds of roads cost vastly different amounts of money between one Caltrans district and another.
Trying to fix those kinds of problems resulted in development of the plan in 2009 that was subsequently shelved. It would have classified state highways by traffic volume and weather conditions
It would have set standards on how well roads should be maintained and a more systematic way of determining the most pressing needs and allocating money to them.
We’re on board up to this point, but the auditor’s report takes another step here: It seems to call on the Legislature to insist on a budget process that would allocate highway maintenance money on the basis of population.
There are several references that Caltrans’ District 7 (Los Angeles and Ventura counties) and District 4 (the Bay Area) have 43 percent of the state’s traffic but only get 27 percent of the maintenance money. Districts 1 (North Coast), 2 (Northeast California), and 9 (Mono and Inyo counties) are swatted for getting 13 percent of total program funding while only having 3 percent of the state’s traffic volume.
If there was enough money to do all the work that needs to be done, we wouldn’t have this concern. There isn’t, and the audit’s call for Caltrans to “revise its allocation methodology” sounds a lot like taking money from rural areas for urban ones. It’s no surprise; this is a recurring battle in transportation funding
It costs about the same to fix a lane of Highway 20 through Lake County as it does to fix a lane of Interstate 880 through Oakland, and you can’t argue that you get the bigger bang for the buck on the busier road.
The problem is, that argument could kill any roadwork outside the big cities. There is no project that could be identified in Lake County that wouldn’t have a twin on a busier road elsewhere. That doesn’t mean needed work here can be ignored however.
We agree the audit finds plenty that needs to be addressed. It seems like every time a close look is taken at Caltrans, issues that need to be addressed become obvious. We can only hope that if the Legislature sets aside its partisanship long enough to actually make progress on the problems of transportation funding, city folks remember that even out here in the sticks, we drive too.
Chico Enterprise-Record
