Better fix for fixing roads
Last month, these pages discussed a State Auditor’s report that criticized the California Department of Transportation’s maintenance division for its “weak cost controls,” lack of financial planning, inefficient funding allocations and inability to track responses to service requests. Now a Legislative Analyst’s Office assessment of highway repair needs similarly decries a lack of accountability and performance measures.
The LAO’s analysis also acknowledges the persistent underfunding of the state’s road infrastructure. “We estimate that the state has ongoing highway repair needs of about $3.6 billion annually, as well as an existing backlog of needed repairs totaling roughly $12 billion,” the LAO concluded. “This is significantly higher than can be addressed through the existing funding of about $1.6 billion annually for these purposes.”
The immediate needs are even greater, as the LAO estimated the state would need to spend roughly $5.5 billion for highway repair programs in fiscal year 2016-17, including contributions to reduce the maintenance backlog.
Despite having among the highest gas taxes in the country, California’s highway system ranked 45th among the states in the Reason Foundation’s 2014 Annual Highway Report. According to the report, the state has the second-highest maintenance spending per mile of state-controlled roads and the fourth-highest administrative spending rate.
California’s transportation system, and particularly its roads, are consistently given short shrift in favor of fanciful environmental projects and other legislative pet projects and boondoggles like the high-speed rail project, which, incidentally, just won the Oakland-based Independent Institute’s first California Golden Fleece Award “for its lack of transparency and history of misleading the public about key details” of the project.
As with innumerable other services, privatizing the roads would be the best way to offer them the most cheaply and efficiently. We don’t expect the state to agree, but it should at least competitively bid highway maintenance to the private sector to save money, minimize bureaucratic bloat and maximize accountability. Barring this, Senate Bill 1141, by Sen. John Moorlach, R-Costa Mesa, creates a pilot program to allow two counties, selected later, to control road maintenance funds now handled by Caltrans. It would offer greater flexibility to local governments, who are more accountable to their citizens than far-removed state bureaucracies.