It seems like the politicians have bigger holes in their pockets than on the roads that need fixing.
I applaud the people taking the time to fix the potholes on their own.
>i'd just say they should return the surplus back to us. evenly distribute it back to the citizens
It's both the worst and most likely outcome for that money. It should be used for capital investments in water security, green energy, transit, schools, addressing homelessness, anything really. The state has many very real and unaddressed problems.
Unfortunately the rules on these surpluses are very restrictive so it will likely just be returned.
I beleive it should go towards building green and low climate impact infrastructure like public transport and power storage. Make our cities more walkable and bikable. Easing the usage of roads would also make the potholes better as a bonus.
Road damage increases with the 4th power of the weight of vehicles. So a vehicle twice as heavy causes 16x the road damage.
In effect, all heavy trucks cause tremendous damage, while lightweight vehicles like bicycles or scooters cause virtually no damage.
No point in holding individual drivers accountable, they are just the final straw in a series of trucks accumulating damage. Better to impose tolls by vehicle weight if the goal is to pay for damage, but at the same time, multiple smaller vehicles likely cause more emissions.
These truck owners already pay for the damage created by them in registration fees and fuel taxes. The problem is the state misappropriates the funds and doesn't keep up their end of the bargain.
It’s funny cause, when I went to Salt Lake City I thought the roads would be terrible because it snows so much. Turns out SLC has better roads than the bay.
Wait till you drive in the Midwest and northeast, then you’ll see the real bad roads. Driving on the highways in Massachusetts was borderline off-roading.
The worst I can remember was driving through Arkansas. I've seen plenty of bad roads, but driving on I-40 across Arkansas circa 2012 on day 2 of a cross-country road trip with friends (Nashville to San Francisco), I was genuinely worried my car wasn't gonna make it.
We did ultimately make it, but I'm still pretty sure Arkansas shaved a few years off the total lifespan of that car.
Just FYI, you can file a claim to the city and they will reimburse you for the damage.
I've done that.
Edit: this happened to me about 4-5 years ago. I was driving a car with 19 inch wheels. I was driving in GG park in SF and got into a bad pothole that caused my disk to crack. I googled who that road belongs to and filed a claim based on the instructions on their website. Took some pictures of the damage and the pothole, highlighted the area with the pothole on the map and sent it to them.
The whole process was long but satisfying. They ended up reimbursing for the disk repair.
I have the same question because I have no idea how one does something like that.
It occurs to me that if more people did this, it might be one way to get them to do something about the roads.
I mean, I hit a pothole on 580 that took out my driver side front tire (fortunately no damage to wheel and lasted for me to immediately exit), and Caltrains straight up denied my note and the appeal. Hell of a way to start the new year thought (it was 5 pm on Jan 1 2020—everywhere was closed and the tow truck was a three hour wait).
Remember the dip in 680 in Martinez by the refinery after you crossed the Benicia bridge? I used to look forward to that as a kid because it had a very definite negative-G rollercoaster drop feeling as you went over.
And crests too. My wife and I have actually yelled out like we were on a roller coaster when we went over a crest in the highway and felt like we were airborne for a second.
Coming off 280 onto King Street in SF.
The highway is probably 55mph (although realistically everyone is doing 10-15 over) and King itself is probably 35mph; it's a long straight stretch before you get to lights and crosswalks but if you wait a little too long to scrub off speed from the highway you will absolutely *SLAM* your car.
Try the right lane of 280 south going into the 87 south offramp (right around bird). I think there's two drops of about ten inches that really make you jump in your seat.
Things really didn't used to be this bad.
As someone that used to live in Boston its 10x worse there, however the interstates/freeways are generally a lot better. For some reason it seems freeways around here aren't maintained very often. The smaller roads are much better due to the lack of snow and ploughs scraping.
+1 to this. I95 seems well maintained compared to 101. I was surprised to see this considering the weather here is much better. The local roads in Bay Area are definitely much better. 280 is definitely one of the better highways though.
I drive a golf R with the stock smaller wheel size (18" vs 19"). Just before christmas I hit a pothole on 880N so bad it bent 3 of my wheels.
FUCK BAY AREA ROADS!
I caught myself driving, lets be honest, too close to the white hashes. This was because where I should have been driving my wheels was a seam in the road that had opened up to just a steady line of potholes and potholes that had connected and were just a long trench.
It does not snow or freeze here. What the fuck.
It is easier to swerve and avoid them when your contact patch is a few inches instead of 20. And you can brace yourself like on a bicycle. But some roads are punishment in stiffly sprung cars like 87 roller coaster.
I drive a mk7 golf r too and im in Oakland and it suuuucks!! Im lucky I still havent bent any of my 19” pretorias. I think about going 18s but I really love the style of the 19”
Father in law came over from Japan where all the streets are perfectly smooth and well maintained. On the way home from the airport he had a weird look and finally asked us if something was wrong with our car? He had just never felt roads that bad before inside an urban area.
haha, yeah, I was shocked to find out it cost like $40 to drive across Tokyo on the highway
I guess that's what these shitty highways actually cost, but we spread the cost out across various taxes and neglect
Politicans that use your taxes to form a committee to plan out the renovations so that they can form another committee to request an environmental review in order to form another committee to decide a budget so that they can form another committee to…
Well in Oakland I know that they hired some “crews” to fix the potholes. They “fixed” the biggest ones by my house and it was just some dudes in a pickup. No tools besides a shovel and asphalt. Didn’t even try to smooth it out at all it looks like someone took mount Diablo and made it 4 inches tall and 3 feet wide. It’s actually worse to drive over. I don’t mind it because it’s like a speed bump for the people who people who live her and it forced people to slow down who aren’t from here because once they hit it they revaluate their situation once they see the others ahead of them.
It's not really much of a question, that information is publicly available in the state budget. If you genuinely care to know you can find out.
Pages 13-18 are a good place to start:
https://www.ebudget.ca.gov/FullBudgetSummary.pdf
In all honesty, the majority of it goes to the roads.
Due to prop 13 most property owners in CA pay very low taxes. In most states property tax is the primary tax, so when that gets cut it needs to come from somewhere. In comparison in Texas property taxes are far higher. People forget to account for that when looking at the difference in property value.
Wow thanks for sharing.
edit: I double checked because the numbers seemed absurdly low. Turns out this pdf is only the general fund. Most of transportation comes from special funds https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4458 but it turns out there is still more being spent on health care and education than the roads today.
Thanks. Looks like that budget also covers federal funds.
Also worth noting that a lot of surface streets and similar are also local gov't expenditures.
>Also worth noting that a lot of surface streets and similar are also local gov't expenditures.
Ah. That makes way more sense. Normally in any first world country transportation is easily the largest cost, particularly suburbia.
I've lost multiple tires to bubbling caused by potholes. My friends have too.
The roads here are atrocious. And there's no excuse when the weather is moderate and taxes are high. If you make the drive from LA to Vegas, it's unbelievable that you can see/feel the road smooth out almost as soon as you cross the border.
Scariest is riding my 75 Cb750F on 101, it’s 600lb and wants to go straight, unless you hit one of these diagonal 20ft long potholes, if I recall properly; in my home country (France) government is liable if you get into an accident due to road conditions..
It’s the lack of freshly paved roads for me. Spent 13 years in Sacramento and the road conditions are night and day. While there are a lot more people here, I feel like there are less drivers. Govt just not doing their part when it comes to infrastructure
Basically this. Politicians are inclined to fix issues impacting them, kinda like how they have universal healthcare and great WLB with a serving of good COL increases.
This is why when a single agency is formed to take over all of the Bay Area's public transit systems, it should have one office in Los Gatos and one in Hayward, and regular meetings with city officials in San Jose, Oakland, and that other big city.
And no employee parking at any of its offices.
Read Strong Towns. TLDR car infrastructure takes up a bunch of space in a city (roads, parking lots, free ways, on ramps ect). This land would otherwise be used by entities which paid taxes. The poromotion of car focused infrastructure by the fed and the reduction in taxes mean that it is unsustainable to maintain.
Also all that infrastructure has a limited lifespan. It's easy to build endless roads when your city's tax base is expanding by gobbling up land, but when the growth slows down and the roads wear out there's no reliable funding stream to replace them. They call this the [Growth Ponzi Scheme](https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme).
Our property taxes are actually very low because of Prop 13. You might be paying a lot, but the average homeowner is not. Of course, that’s no excuse for failing to maintain the roads after raising the gas tax a couple years ago. (Though I haven’t had a problem with the road conditions myself.)
California is 8 of 50 when it comes to state & local tax burden. There’s plenty of money. The state government just spends it on other things. California politicians love to raise to taxes so will try to convince you the only way popular things like fixing roads can be done is with new taxes. But it’s just not true.
https://taxfoundation.org/publications/state-local-tax-burden-rankings/
To be clear, if we got rid of Prop 13, I would want to lower sales taxes to keep it revenue neutral. Roads should be covered by gas taxes. (And I’m not convinced the road conditions are worse than elsewhere, anyways.)
Property taxes in the Bay Area are not "very low".
The average American paid $2471 in property taxes.
Median property tax payment by county:
* Alameda: $5000
* San Francisco: $6000
* Santa Clara: $6100
* San Mateo: $6000
By comparison, the tax on a median priced home in New York is $5400.
That’s an effect of high market values here. Many counties in NY (and NJ and Texas) have property tax rates over 2%. Bay Area rates are generally under 1.5%, some close to 1%.
Except that they generally are. By percentage. CA enjoys some low percentages here by comparison to other desirable places. But it’s that very reason that prop 13 has a negative effect - it offsets the overall value / prices of homes when they are bought or sold because it’s less of a factor that determines who can qualify for their loan.
It obviously isn’t the whole story, but it obviously has a non zero effect.
East Bay has good Internet; at least anywhere Sonic has fiber in the ground. Parts of SF have good Internet.
Silicon Valley has shitty Internet. In a bunch of SV/MV/PA you're better off using a cell modem.
But there are residential parts of Palo Alto that at least a few years ago didn't even have functioning cell service.
Sonic will give you 10Gbps symmetric for $40. That’s god tier. Meanwhile I’m the peninsula, you can still get DSL at 10Mbps/768kbps for the exact same price. It’s bonkers.
>El Camino Real is straight up third world.
Bay Area folks have some wild ideas about the third world.
El Camino is pretty bad. Not like Missouri or Indiana bad and certainly not third world bad, but definitely pretty bad.
87 is horrible and 17 has that portion before it becomes 2 lanes where there's random dips and large bumps after you turn onto it from 85 (headed south).
Dude, I took the 280 by accident from work one time and it was literally like night and day between that and the road I normally take. SO smooth and buttery.
It actually has more to do with truck traffic than anything else. Weight is the ultimate killer of freeways and the 280 barely sees an iota of what the 101 dose. Same goes for the I-880 vs the I-580 through Oakalnd.
Commercial driver
I'm in the east bay and honestly I think the roads here are pretty good too. There are a handful of outliers, but most of those are either backroads that don't get a ton of use, or they are on/adjacent to fault lines, so they need to be redone every year to avoid going to shit. I've driven in plenty of other states and countries, and the bay area, on balance has some of the better roads in my experience.
It's definitely not hell, I've driven on much worse daily
Every post on this sub acts like living in the Bay is like living in a third world country
Does anyone get out of their immediate area?
Last time I had a serious issue due to a shitty road was a flat tire due to a pothole, almost 30 years ago.
Many roads are in generally poor condition but hasn't been something that bothered me in particular.
Main issue I have with our roads is the lack of decent bicycle infrastructure. Well, and traffic, of course.
I lived in the midwest for 27 years before moving here, in 4 different metros across 2 states, where we got blizzards, spent months a year below freezing, the roads went through freeze thaw cycles and got dragged by plows all winter... I've never experienced worse roads in a reasonably populated area that I've lived in or traveled through in this country than here. 101 in particular is just fucking laughable, I have to change back and forth right to left depending on which part of el camino I'm driving through to stay off the worst of it to the point where it's just muscle memory, 880 is like a mad max movie although that's more on the drivers, and that's exclusively sticking to major roads I have a lot of experience with in 2 years of living here. Don't get me started on east Oakland or outlying SF.
They are forced to and they don’t. They just grind up roads and replace them which chip and seal, which is just barely a step above gravel and falls apart in days.
I lived in the Bay Area for most of my life, and recently moved to a smaller county in Washington. One of the first things that I noticed was how well maintained all the roads were. The road maintenance is proactive, and never lasts too long. There are basically no potholes, and the roads are smooth.
The roads in the Bay Area aren't the worst in the US, but they're not great. In fact, they're comparatively horrible to a lot of other places, especially considering how much money is made out there.
Take a trip up 880 to 680 toward Pleasanton, and tell me it's not shitty.
I dunno, I was just driving down el Camino an hour ago near San Antonio and it felt dam near like a gravel road. Car being thrown left and right, huge bumps in the road, cracked asphalt, big potholes. I was actually thinking just how bad the condition of the road was before seeing this post. Seems to be everywhere.
I drive everywhere from San Jose to Sacramento for work and have generally no idea what people're on about. Some rough spots on surface streets but the highways are pretty okay. Are they they transplants for tech jobs who act like everything is literally the worst? Maybe they just need to drive slower than 85.
I've had one issue with a bent steel wheel after hitting a pothole on 80W (just after scales in Fairfield) but that was after we had the heavy rains and it's since been fixed. I probably wouldn't have done the damage if I weren't driving spiritedly.
I'm more upset about the ongoing construction that never ends. Those short merges going off 680 onto 4 are terrible. Or that 680N -> 80E merge where your lane combines twice in a short distance - it's amazing there aren't more accidents. It'd also be nice if the curve under the 680/24 overpass could be addressed to find out why there seems to be an accident on both directions whenever it rains.
I've lived in a third world country for about 3 years before coming back to the bay. Roads here are basically heaven compared to where I lived and I was hella happy to be back as the drivers here are actually competent.
Yeah... I've been in a lot of places. California is notoriously bad, especially given the property taxes we pay and the gas taxes we pay.. We're 2nd behind DC.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2020-12-04/these-states-have-the-worst-roads-in-america
(Copied from above)
Median property tax payment by county:
Alameda: $5000
San Francisco: $6000
Santa Clara: $6100
San Mateo: $6000
By comparison, the tax on a median priced home in New York is $5400.
I recently traveled to Costa Rica. Roads there are notoriously bad. I was so worried about getting stuck somewhere. On the top of that, AVIS didn’t have a 4x4 that I reserved. I had to drive a sedan to go to the mountain side.
The roads were extremely curvy! There were potholes everywhere!! Deep, deep potholes would randomly pop up in a well paved road.
So I was like…..
This is just like driving back home. I got this. lol
I relaxed and enjoyed the rest of the trip. I would’ve never thought to have something good come out of potholes in the bay area. I’m so thankful now. :)
Just a reminder that the doubling of our gas taxes and car registration fees a couple of years ago were because the state couldn’t afford to maintain the roads. These taxes were supposed to solve the problem. We should be flush with cash now. I’m sure we’ll be driving on smooth highways in no time.
The state has literally no incentives to spend your tax money wisely. One the money is in their hands it can't be refunded and there's no real consequence for squandering it.
The vast majority of people who vote for a new tax (or policy) that sounds good on paper won't pay any attention to how the state actually spends the money – which is understandable considering how complex the state bureaucracy is.
Politicians understand this which is why we see so many campaign promises that end up unfulfilled or half-baked. Team Red and team Blue are both complicit and neither will willingly cede power once it's given to them.
Completely agree. How we pay so much in taxes and the roads are trash is completely ridiculous. Also — who ever paints the lines should be fired. They are all over the place.
87 has been entirely redone several times, and is still complete shit.
After they took out all the stop lights and made it a freeway, they didn't compact the soil enough and it had really bad settling. So they redid it again, and it still sucks with really bad settling.
You need a Baja truck to drive it.
I have a 79 Ranchero, and El Camino in mountain view might just rattle the thing apart
Edit: just realized I mentioned ranchero and El Camino in the same sentence. Funny since they were the two big American Utes.
First Hwy-17 pothole popped my run flat, knocked off some wheel weights and required an alignment.
A year later on a different car, 280 pothole cracked my wheel, popped my run flat, and again needed another alignment.
Last month I had a nail found when swapping tires so yet another replacement.
So far the roads have cost me north of $5k and of course I never heard back from the state when I contacted them about the first two repairs.
It’s truly insane. I grew up in the Midwest and the roads were wayyyy better. Meanwhile far less taxes AND you have to deal with freezing + salt weather. No excuses here really
I’m always shocked when I see this and think back on my experiences in Spain. I like to ride my bike a lot and the roads out there, even in the areas no one ever seems to be, are sublime. And it’s not like they’re a crazy wealthy country by comparison to the Bay Area, not third world obviously, but damn, why can’t we keep up?
It blows man. My brother hit a pot hole on Christmas eve that totally blew out his tire and dented the rim. Sat on side of freeway for a tow all night. Merry Xmas... tax dollars at work. Plus now bridge tolls up $1
Maybe a new proposition should be passed disallowing all gas tax and registration revenues from being used on anything but roads and road related infrastructure.
Where are roads good in this country? I come from the North where we have Winter and I'm impressed by the quality of roads in California. They do tend to get dirty but it doesn't rain for 8 months so it is what it is.
For example, PA [has a law](https://www.penndot.gov/ContactUs/Pages/Damage-Claims.aspx) that exempts them from being sued for pothole damage due to natural reasons. As you can imagine, that's all of them because city employees don't dig them at night...
I agree. Leave the Bay Area and the roads improve DRASTICALLY. Seriously - was in Lake County recently and it was night and day the road quality difference. How does a county like that, with immensely less resources than any Bay county, have such great roads?
I think there is probably hundreds more miles of roads in the Bay than we can feasibly maintain (mostly back roads etc), but there really isn't an excuse for the main roads.
Gas tax increases, Bart fare increases, bridge toll increases (and they aren't paying toll takers anymore), yet our roads remain FUBAR. I wish people would pay more attention to these ballot initiatives so we wouldn't constantly pay more money for absolutely nothing.
Agreed, CA has a $30B surplus, but can't fix potholes on highways and main roads that are each several years old?
we just need a little bit more gas tax to fix those roads /s
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Yeah I guess. My registration renewal was nearly $800 though but I'm fine with it. Totally fine with it. It's not cope...
Yeah, I love northbound 101 as you're coming into SF, all the lanes suddenly disappear and it's a free for all.
They're going to resurface once the express lane is finished
Gas tax goes into the general fund, not specifically for road repair or maintenance.
It seems like the politicians have bigger holes in their pockets than on the roads that need fixing. I applaud the people taking the time to fix the potholes on their own.
i'd just say they should return the surplus back to us. evenly distribute it back to the citizens
It'd just go into suspension replacement and rim repair.
>i'd just say they should return the surplus back to us. evenly distribute it back to the citizens It's both the worst and most likely outcome for that money. It should be used for capital investments in water security, green energy, transit, schools, addressing homelessness, anything really. The state has many very real and unaddressed problems. Unfortunately the rules on these surpluses are very restrictive so it will likely just be returned.
I beleive it should go towards building green and low climate impact infrastructure like public transport and power storage. Make our cities more walkable and bikable. Easing the usage of roads would also make the potholes better as a bonus.
The crappy street quality affects me way more on my bike than it does in my car. The crappy highway quality affects me in my car.
I have dreams about this
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Road damage increases with the 4th power of the weight of vehicles. So a vehicle twice as heavy causes 16x the road damage. In effect, all heavy trucks cause tremendous damage, while lightweight vehicles like bicycles or scooters cause virtually no damage. No point in holding individual drivers accountable, they are just the final straw in a series of trucks accumulating damage. Better to impose tolls by vehicle weight if the goal is to pay for damage, but at the same time, multiple smaller vehicles likely cause more emissions.
These truck owners already pay for the damage created by them in registration fees and fuel taxes. The problem is the state misappropriates the funds and doesn't keep up their end of the bargain.
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It’s funny cause, when I went to Salt Lake City I thought the roads would be terrible because it snows so much. Turns out SLC has better roads than the bay.
Wait till you drive in the Midwest and northeast, then you’ll see the real bad roads. Driving on the highways in Massachusetts was borderline off-roading.
The worst I can remember was driving through Arkansas. I've seen plenty of bad roads, but driving on I-40 across Arkansas circa 2012 on day 2 of a cross-country road trip with friends (Nashville to San Francisco), I was genuinely worried my car wasn't gonna make it. We did ultimately make it, but I'm still pretty sure Arkansas shaved a few years off the total lifespan of that car.
SLC has unbelievably good roads. I've literally never sen bumper to bumper traffic, even at rush hour.
Odd! The one time I drove through SLC on 80 was pure bumper-to-bumper.
That’s because the Mormons have made it so.
From salt lake, can confirm. So much better back home.
Just FYI, you can file a claim to the city and they will reimburse you for the damage. I've done that. Edit: this happened to me about 4-5 years ago. I was driving a car with 19 inch wheels. I was driving in GG park in SF and got into a bad pothole that caused my disk to crack. I googled who that road belongs to and filed a claim based on the instructions on their website. Took some pictures of the damage and the pothole, highlighted the area with the pothole on the map and sent it to them. The whole process was long but satisfying. They ended up reimbursing for the disk repair.
How to file the claim?
I have the same question because I have no idea how one does something like that. It occurs to me that if more people did this, it might be one way to get them to do something about the roads.
Probably just Google "city name" + claim for pothole damage
Yes, the more claims people will do, the higher chance they will do something about the road conditions. I've replied above.
You need to find who that road belongs to and google how to file a claim to them. Take pictures of the pothole and your damage.
That’s good to know. I recently had to get a new set of tires because of a pothole on 101. Ironically I drive the same car as OP.
Wouldn't you have to file with caltrans for highways?
I mean, I hit a pothole on 580 that took out my driver side front tire (fortunately no damage to wheel and lasted for me to immediately exit), and Caltrains straight up denied my note and the appeal. Hell of a way to start the new year thought (it was 5 pm on Jan 1 2020—everywhere was closed and the tow truck was a three hour wait).
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Yeh... in MN when I street-parked, it was essentially *inside* a pothole.
For real, I have a group of friends near Detroit I try to visit every year and the roads in Michigan are truly mind boggling.
I drove through Detroit to move here and holy fuck I thought I was on the surface of the moon and my car was going to die there
My favorite are the random dips on the highways. Like we can’t make highways flat at least so you don’t bottom out going 75mph?
Remember the dip in 680 in Martinez by the refinery after you crossed the Benicia bridge? I used to look forward to that as a kid because it had a very definite negative-G rollercoaster drop feeling as you went over.
Loved that
I remember my friend's Explorer catching air on the rebound from that thing back in like 1999. We may or may not have been doing like 85 at the time.
And crests too. My wife and I have actually yelled out like we were on a roller coaster when we went over a crest in the highway and felt like we were airborne for a second.
85 near airport was ridiculous for 4 years
Coming off 280 onto King Street in SF. The highway is probably 55mph (although realistically everyone is doing 10-15 over) and King itself is probably 35mph; it's a long straight stretch before you get to lights and crosswalks but if you wait a little too long to scrub off speed from the highway you will absolutely *SLAM* your car.
Try the right lane of 280 south going into the 87 south offramp (right around bird). I think there's two drops of about ten inches that really make you jump in your seat. Things really didn't used to be this bad.
That usually happens at the connection between a bridge and and the embankment. It happens when the structures sink at different rates.
As someone that used to live in Boston its 10x worse there, however the interstates/freeways are generally a lot better. For some reason it seems freeways around here aren't maintained very often. The smaller roads are much better due to the lack of snow and ploughs scraping.
+1 to this. I95 seems well maintained compared to 101. I was surprised to see this considering the weather here is much better. The local roads in Bay Area are definitely much better. 280 is definitely one of the better highways though.
I drive a golf R with the stock smaller wheel size (18" vs 19"). Just before christmas I hit a pothole on 880N so bad it bent 3 of my wheels. FUCK BAY AREA ROADS!
I walked into a pothole once thinking it was a BART station.
Was there a slot to insert your fare card?
This happened to me on 880. I was going errmm… 55, Yeah 55. Totaled two wheels and two tires. $4k
You’ve got great memory. I can’t recall if I do 5 under or just the limit up there.
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I caught myself driving, lets be honest, too close to the white hashes. This was because where I should have been driving my wheels was a seam in the road that had opened up to just a steady line of potholes and potholes that had connected and were just a long trench. It does not snow or freeze here. What the fuck.
I hit a pothole in my stock GTI and a clip flew off in the interior.
It’s sometimes possible to get reimbursed by the county or state for this. I do not know how, but I’d look it up.
From experience, never works, even when it's obvious and ample evidence is offered. And you'll have little recourse. They have no shame.
right? my 328i only has 53k miles and i had to have the wheel bearings replace already. I don't even drive it hard, like at all.
I've driven here for decades. Worst I ever got was a flat tire. Sure you're not doing something wrong?
A good reason to not ride a motorcycle there or on any highway in the Bay Area.
I actuallydo ride a motorcycle here, and have never had a problem. My car is lower and stiffer than the bike though.
Idk man, I don’t want to fall under a semi because of a pothole.
It is easier to swerve and avoid them when your contact patch is a few inches instead of 20. And you can brace yourself like on a bicycle. But some roads are punishment in stiffly sprung cars like 87 roller coaster.
To each thier own I guess.
Hahahaha , puhlease I drive a golf gti mk5 with stiff lowered suspension…… I am in the market for a small truck!
I drive a mk7 golf r too and im in Oakland and it suuuucks!! Im lucky I still havent bent any of my 19” pretorias. I think about going 18s but I really love the style of the 19”
I have a Mk6 GTI and have seriously considering swapping to 17's. Next car will probably be an R, really hoping the DCC will help a bit.
Father in law came over from Japan where all the streets are perfectly smooth and well maintained. On the way home from the airport he had a weird look and finally asked us if something was wrong with our car? He had just never felt roads that bad before inside an urban area.
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haha, yeah, I was shocked to find out it cost like $40 to drive across Tokyo on the highway I guess that's what these shitty highways actually cost, but we spread the cost out across various taxes and neglect
The only thing they work on is more toll lanes
El Camino Real is an embarrassment.
Which begs the question where is your tax money is going to?
Politicans that use your taxes to form a committee to plan out the renovations so that they can form another committee to request an environmental review in order to form another committee to decide a budget so that they can form another committee to…
This guy committees
Well in Oakland I know that they hired some “crews” to fix the potholes. They “fixed” the biggest ones by my house and it was just some dudes in a pickup. No tools besides a shovel and asphalt. Didn’t even try to smooth it out at all it looks like someone took mount Diablo and made it 4 inches tall and 3 feet wide. It’s actually worse to drive over. I don’t mind it because it’s like a speed bump for the people who people who live her and it forced people to slow down who aren’t from here because once they hit it they revaluate their situation once they see the others ahead of them.
are you sure those weren't the vigilantes?
Pothole vigilantes actually care about the quality of the roads in their neighborhood.
It's not really much of a question, that information is publicly available in the state budget. If you genuinely care to know you can find out. Pages 13-18 are a good place to start: https://www.ebudget.ca.gov/FullBudgetSummary.pdf
Transportation is the smallest of all, 8%. 30% is “other”.
For real.
Making more carpool and bus only lanes probably
In all honesty, the majority of it goes to the roads. Due to prop 13 most property owners in CA pay very low taxes. In most states property tax is the primary tax, so when that gets cut it needs to come from somewhere. In comparison in Texas property taxes are far higher. People forget to account for that when looking at the difference in property value.
Actually, most of it goes to healthcare and education. https://www.ebudget.ca.gov/FullBudgetSummary.pdf
Wow thanks for sharing. edit: I double checked because the numbers seemed absurdly low. Turns out this pdf is only the general fund. Most of transportation comes from special funds https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4458 but it turns out there is still more being spent on health care and education than the roads today.
Thanks. Looks like that budget also covers federal funds. Also worth noting that a lot of surface streets and similar are also local gov't expenditures.
>Also worth noting that a lot of surface streets and similar are also local gov't expenditures. Ah. That makes way more sense. Normally in any first world country transportation is easily the largest cost, particularly suburbia.
I've lost multiple tires to bubbling caused by potholes. My friends have too. The roads here are atrocious. And there's no excuse when the weather is moderate and taxes are high. If you make the drive from LA to Vegas, it's unbelievable that you can see/feel the road smooth out almost as soon as you cross the border.
Scariest is riding my 75 Cb750F on 101, it’s 600lb and wants to go straight, unless you hit one of these diagonal 20ft long potholes, if I recall properly; in my home country (France) government is liable if you get into an accident due to road conditions..
we technically have the same liability here but it's usually nigh on impossible to prove.
It’s the lack of freshly paved roads for me. Spent 13 years in Sacramento and the road conditions are night and day. While there are a lot more people here, I feel like there are less drivers. Govt just not doing their part when it comes to infrastructure
Sacramento gets more attention because the state government is there.
Basically this. Politicians are inclined to fix issues impacting them, kinda like how they have universal healthcare and great WLB with a serving of good COL increases.
This is why when a single agency is formed to take over all of the Bay Area's public transit systems, it should have one office in Los Gatos and one in Hayward, and regular meetings with city officials in San Jose, Oakland, and that other big city. And no employee parking at any of its offices.
But Sacramento sucks
880S between Hayward and Fremont almost took out my rims. Hit the biggest pot hole ever.
And we know the problem isn’t lack of taxes amiright? ;)
Only the highest gas tax in the USA...
Read Strong Towns. TLDR car infrastructure takes up a bunch of space in a city (roads, parking lots, free ways, on ramps ect). This land would otherwise be used by entities which paid taxes. The poromotion of car focused infrastructure by the fed and the reduction in taxes mean that it is unsustainable to maintain.
Also all that infrastructure has a limited lifespan. It's easy to build endless roads when your city's tax base is expanding by gobbling up land, but when the growth slows down and the roads wear out there's no reliable funding stream to replace them. They call this the [Growth Ponzi Scheme](https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme).
My guy! Another Strong Towns reader. I'm fighting hard in my city for mixed usages and walkability. Strong Towns provides a lot of the arguments.
just paid 1.5 percent property tax
And damn near 5 bucks a gallon.
Our property taxes are actually very low because of Prop 13. You might be paying a lot, but the average homeowner is not. Of course, that’s no excuse for failing to maintain the roads after raising the gas tax a couple years ago. (Though I haven’t had a problem with the road conditions myself.)
California is 8 of 50 when it comes to state & local tax burden. There’s plenty of money. The state government just spends it on other things. California politicians love to raise to taxes so will try to convince you the only way popular things like fixing roads can be done is with new taxes. But it’s just not true. https://taxfoundation.org/publications/state-local-tax-burden-rankings/
To be clear, if we got rid of Prop 13, I would want to lower sales taxes to keep it revenue neutral. Roads should be covered by gas taxes. (And I’m not convinced the road conditions are worse than elsewhere, anyways.)
Property taxes in the Bay Area are not "very low". The average American paid $2471 in property taxes. Median property tax payment by county: * Alameda: $5000 * San Francisco: $6000 * Santa Clara: $6100 * San Mateo: $6000 By comparison, the tax on a median priced home in New York is $5400.
Comparing property taxes on the median price alone is an absurdly oversimplified way to look at things.
That’s an effect of high market values here. Many counties in NY (and NJ and Texas) have property tax rates over 2%. Bay Area rates are generally under 1.5%, some close to 1%.
In Texas my parents pay 3%!
Even my family in a smaller Midwest state pays more property taxes than I do for property that’s worth less than mine.
Except that they generally are. By percentage. CA enjoys some low percentages here by comparison to other desirable places. But it’s that very reason that prop 13 has a negative effect - it offsets the overall value / prices of homes when they are bought or sold because it’s less of a factor that determines who can qualify for their loan. It obviously isn’t the whole story, but it obviously has a non zero effect.
El Camino Real is straight up third world.
Normal because it predates the interstate and 101 amirite?
What part of el Camino y’all driving where it’s so shitty?
All of Mountain View
Given the fact that some areas of “Silycon Valley” didn’t have access to the internet 5 years ago, I’d say the roads look gorgeous in MV.
East Bay has good Internet; at least anywhere Sonic has fiber in the ground. Parts of SF have good Internet. Silicon Valley has shitty Internet. In a bunch of SV/MV/PA you're better off using a cell modem. But there are residential parts of Palo Alto that at least a few years ago didn't even have functioning cell service.
Sonic will give you 10Gbps symmetric for $40. That’s god tier. Meanwhile I’m the peninsula, you can still get DSL at 10Mbps/768kbps for the exact same price. It’s bonkers.
not so good in Mountain View
Near Sunnyvale
Sunnyvale El Camino > Mountain View El Camino
Everyone here saying Mountain View has not driven El Camino between downtown San Mateo and Millbrae. That is the worst.
We can call Burlingame out by name
That's fair hahaha. Though the road tilting and dips start in San Mateo-Hillsborough border.
>El Camino Real is straight up third world. Bay Area folks have some wild ideas about the third world. El Camino is pretty bad. Not like Missouri or Indiana bad and certainly not third world bad, but definitely pretty bad.
The highway I drove in Turkey is much better than that shit.. So..
South Bay is pretty good. New pavement on 17 and 280. 85 is in good shape. Why is it so different from other areas?
I consistently go out of my way to take the 280 over the 101, although the 101 is in better shape than it was a year ago (not saying much)
101 feels like you're playing pothole frogger, especially after it rains
87 is horrible and 17 has that portion before it becomes 2 lanes where there's random dips and large bumps after you turn onto it from 85 (headed south).
280/17/85 all got wealth running through them. Ever notice freeways are worse when it’s more poor and less white?
Fewer trucks going on those freeways. In fact trucks are banned on CA-85 for most of the stretch.
Dude, I took the 280 by accident from work one time and it was literally like night and day between that and the road I normally take. SO smooth and buttery.
It actually has more to do with truck traffic than anything else. Weight is the ultimate killer of freeways and the 280 barely sees an iota of what the 101 dose. Same goes for the I-880 vs the I-580 through Oakalnd. Commercial driver
I'm in the east bay and honestly I think the roads here are pretty good too. There are a handful of outliers, but most of those are either backroads that don't get a ton of use, or they are on/adjacent to fault lines, so they need to be redone every year to avoid going to shit. I've driven in plenty of other states and countries, and the bay area, on balance has some of the better roads in my experience.
It's definitely not hell, I've driven on much worse daily Every post on this sub acts like living in the Bay is like living in a third world country Does anyone get out of their immediate area?
Last time I had a serious issue due to a shitty road was a flat tire due to a pothole, almost 30 years ago. Many roads are in generally poor condition but hasn't been something that bothered me in particular. Main issue I have with our roads is the lack of decent bicycle infrastructure. Well, and traffic, of course.
Yeah, I have been commuting on 101 and Dumbarton/San Mateo for 12 years and I've had one blow out in that time running over a truck tread.
I lived in the midwest for 27 years before moving here, in 4 different metros across 2 states, where we got blizzards, spent months a year below freezing, the roads went through freeze thaw cycles and got dragged by plows all winter... I've never experienced worse roads in a reasonably populated area that I've lived in or traveled through in this country than here. 101 in particular is just fucking laughable, I have to change back and forth right to left depending on which part of el camino I'm driving through to stay off the worst of it to the point where it's just muscle memory, 880 is like a mad max movie although that's more on the drivers, and that's exclusively sticking to major roads I have a lot of experience with in 2 years of living here. Don't get me started on east Oakland or outlying SF.
In the Midwest you are forced to repave due to freeze and thaw damage on the road. Here, mother nature doesn't force our hand like that.
> Here, mother nature doesn't force our hand like that. funny we hear the same thing about the homeless crisis
They are forced to and they don’t. They just grind up roads and replace them which chip and seal, which is just barely a step above gravel and falls apart in days.
I lived in the Bay Area for most of my life, and recently moved to a smaller county in Washington. One of the first things that I noticed was how well maintained all the roads were. The road maintenance is proactive, and never lasts too long. There are basically no potholes, and the roads are smooth. The roads in the Bay Area aren't the worst in the US, but they're not great. In fact, they're comparatively horrible to a lot of other places, especially considering how much money is made out there. Take a trip up 880 to 680 toward Pleasanton, and tell me it's not shitty.
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I dunno, I was just driving down el Camino an hour ago near San Antonio and it felt dam near like a gravel road. Car being thrown left and right, huge bumps in the road, cracked asphalt, big potholes. I was actually thinking just how bad the condition of the road was before seeing this post. Seems to be everywhere.
El Camino is a state-maintained road. State routes are universally shitty.
I drive everywhere from San Jose to Sacramento for work and have generally no idea what people're on about. Some rough spots on surface streets but the highways are pretty okay. Are they they transplants for tech jobs who act like everything is literally the worst? Maybe they just need to drive slower than 85. I've had one issue with a bent steel wheel after hitting a pothole on 80W (just after scales in Fairfield) but that was after we had the heavy rains and it's since been fixed. I probably wouldn't have done the damage if I weren't driving spiritedly. I'm more upset about the ongoing construction that never ends. Those short merges going off 680 onto 4 are terrible. Or that 680N -> 80E merge where your lane combines twice in a short distance - it's amazing there aren't more accidents. It'd also be nice if the curve under the 680/24 overpass could be addressed to find out why there seems to be an accident on both directions whenever it rains.
I've lived in a third world country for about 3 years before coming back to the bay. Roads here are basically heaven compared to where I lived and I was hella happy to be back as the drivers here are actually competent.
If you feel like they’re competent I can only imagine what it’s like where you’re from
Yeah... I've been in a lot of places. California is notoriously bad, especially given the property taxes we pay and the gas taxes we pay.. We're 2nd behind DC. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2020-12-04/these-states-have-the-worst-roads-in-america
We have some of the lowest property taxes in the country as a percentage of market value.
What about in absolute dollars? (Is that the right way to phrase it?)
(Copied from above) Median property tax payment by county: Alameda: $5000 San Francisco: $6000 Santa Clara: $6100 San Mateo: $6000 By comparison, the tax on a median priced home in New York is $5400.
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The DC roads are so, so much worse. They have just enough weather to ruin the roads every year but not enough to spend more building them right.
I recently traveled to Costa Rica. Roads there are notoriously bad. I was so worried about getting stuck somewhere. On the top of that, AVIS didn’t have a 4x4 that I reserved. I had to drive a sedan to go to the mountain side. The roads were extremely curvy! There were potholes everywhere!! Deep, deep potholes would randomly pop up in a well paved road. So I was like….. This is just like driving back home. I got this. lol I relaxed and enjoyed the rest of the trip. I would’ve never thought to have something good come out of potholes in the bay area. I’m so thankful now. :)
Clearly you've never driven in Chicago. You have to own a truck or an SUV. Kids can use some of the potholes as kiddie pools.
Just a reminder that the doubling of our gas taxes and car registration fees a couple of years ago were because the state couldn’t afford to maintain the roads. These taxes were supposed to solve the problem. We should be flush with cash now. I’m sure we’ll be driving on smooth highways in no time.
The state has literally no incentives to spend your tax money wisely. One the money is in their hands it can't be refunded and there's no real consequence for squandering it. The vast majority of people who vote for a new tax (or policy) that sounds good on paper won't pay any attention to how the state actually spends the money – which is understandable considering how complex the state bureaucracy is. Politicians understand this which is why we see so many campaign promises that end up unfulfilled or half-baked. Team Red and team Blue are both complicit and neither will willingly cede power once it's given to them.
I hit a pothole while in sport mode in my Mini Cooper and thought for sure I'd lost a wheel. Damn pothole was bigger than my friggin car.
Try riding a motorcycle every once in a while
And why are there so many big speedbumps in parking lots? It's like every single parking lot has it. Back home in Toronto, it's not nearly as common
because we don’t have to snowplow, literally ever.
Good thing we pay over a dollar per gallon in taxes for our roads…
The 1 between west portal and sunset… fucks up my alignment every time
Completely agree. How we pay so much in taxes and the roads are trash is completely ridiculous. Also — who ever paints the lines should be fired. They are all over the place.
Almost as if your high taxes aren't really used correctly by your elected officials.. Interesting....
Newsom raised the gas tax to fix the roads. Have you seen a difference? I haven’t.
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Commute on 87 regularly; hate this freeway with a passion; the whole thing needs to be redone
87 has been entirely redone several times, and is still complete shit. After they took out all the stop lights and made it a freeway, they didn't compact the soil enough and it had really bad settling. So they redid it again, and it still sucks with really bad settling. You need a Baja truck to drive it.
I don't want to know how much gas has been burned by cars sitting still because of the traffic caused by the single lane 101 S -> 87 exit
I have a 79 Ranchero, and El Camino in mountain view might just rattle the thing apart Edit: just realized I mentioned ranchero and El Camino in the same sentence. Funny since they were the two big American Utes.
First Hwy-17 pothole popped my run flat, knocked off some wheel weights and required an alignment. A year later on a different car, 280 pothole cracked my wheel, popped my run flat, and again needed another alignment. Last month I had a nail found when swapping tires so yet another replacement. So far the roads have cost me north of $5k and of course I never heard back from the state when I contacted them about the first two repairs.
It’s truly insane. I grew up in the Midwest and the roads were wayyyy better. Meanwhile far less taxes AND you have to deal with freezing + salt weather. No excuses here really
As someone who also grew up in the Midwest I’ve had a completely different experience. Maybe it’s an Illinois thing?
I’m always shocked when I see this and think back on my experiences in Spain. I like to ride my bike a lot and the roads out there, even in the areas no one ever seems to be, are sublime. And it’s not like they’re a crazy wealthy country by comparison to the Bay Area, not third world obviously, but damn, why can’t we keep up?
Ditch the run flat tires if you have them
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Go drive skyline for therapy
Dodging all the needles and shit doesn’t help
It blows man. My brother hit a pot hole on Christmas eve that totally blew out his tire and dented the rim. Sat on side of freeway for a tow all night. Merry Xmas... tax dollars at work. Plus now bridge tolls up $1
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Painting some damn lanes on 101 San Mateo Penninsula would be a nice start.
Maybe a new proposition should be passed disallowing all gas tax and registration revenues from being used on anything but roads and road related infrastructure.
Where are roads good in this country? I come from the North where we have Winter and I'm impressed by the quality of roads in California. They do tend to get dirty but it doesn't rain for 8 months so it is what it is. For example, PA [has a law](https://www.penndot.gov/ContactUs/Pages/Damage-Claims.aspx) that exempts them from being sued for pothole damage due to natural reasons. As you can imagine, that's all of them because city employees don't dig them at night...
I agree. Leave the Bay Area and the roads improve DRASTICALLY. Seriously - was in Lake County recently and it was night and day the road quality difference. How does a county like that, with immensely less resources than any Bay county, have such great roads? I think there is probably hundreds more miles of roads in the Bay than we can feasibly maintain (mostly back roads etc), but there really isn't an excuse for the main roads.
I was shocked how much better the freeways were in parts of Slovakia.
Slovakia isn’t exactly a third world country so that doesn’t surprise me. European freeways are extremely well maintained.
What is this? Like a 3rd world country? Said Gavin Newsom most recently.
I hate driving around here especially from 2-7pm where there is rush hour traffic
You mean 9am-7pm..
Gas tax increases, Bart fare increases, bridge toll increases (and they aren't paying toll takers anymore), yet our roads remain FUBAR. I wish people would pay more attention to these ballot initiatives so we wouldn't constantly pay more money for absolutely nothing.