Fewer ker-plunks! Roads in Bay Area getting better

Latest MTC annual pavement quality report shows progress

OAKLAND » Cedric Lathan was not surprised to hear that, according to a new report, Oakland’s streets continue to rank among the bumpiest in the Bay Area.

“Lower than low” is how the 62-year-old sound engineer described the quality of the roads that rattle his car’s suspension and once bent a rim on his bike.

He recalled a particularly rough stretch of Harold Street in the Dimond District that runs parallel to Interstate 580. For years, he said, the one-way street looked half-finished: One lane was relatively smooth, while the other was so full of potholes you wouldn’t dare drive on it.

“It looked like it was bombed,” Lathan said.

But the roads that have had Lathan and other Bay Area drivers slaloming around potholes and bracing for bumps are slowly but steadily improving, according to the latest edition of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s annual pavement quality report.

On the whole, the survey found, the Bay Area’s roads in 2018 rated a 68 out of 100 possible points, up one point from last year, placing them at the upper end of the “fair” range. The region’s threeyear average of 67 has risen four points since 2003. The annual survey is based on data collected by local governments that is fed back to the commission, which uses a software program to determine each city’s score.

“The trend line is very, very

encouraging,” said John Goodwin, a spokesman for the commission.

Goodwin added that transportation officials believe the improvements are “poised to accelerate,” because 2018 was the first full year that money raised by California’s gas tax increase, known as SB 1, began flowing to local governments to fund road repairs. Voters shot down an attempt to repeal the tax last fall.

“It’s going to take years to whittle down the backlogs of deferred maintenance that have accumulated,” Goodwin said. “But you can already see the momentum moving in the right direction.”

There is still a big gap between the Bay Area’s smoothest streets and its bumpiest.

Dublin again topped the survey with a three-year average grade of 86 — classified as “very good/excellent” pavement with “few if any signs of distress.” Clayton was not far behind at 84, while Palo Alto, El Cerrito and Daly City scored an 83.

Petaluma, with a score of 45, replaced Larkspur as the city with the Bay Area’s worst roads. In 2018, Larkspur received 42 points, but this year increased its score slightly, to 46.

These scores, falling into the reports’ “poor” category, indicate that a city’s pavement is so bad it significantly affects the speed and flow of traffic and needs “major rehabilitation or reconstruction.”

San Jose’s roads scored a 65 in the MTC’s survey, while San Francisco’s were considered “good” at 72.

The Oakland roads that Lathan and other residents have complained about were rated “at risk,” with a three-year average of 54, meaning they have “deteriorated” and “require immediate attention.”

Amid a chorus of complaints from residents — some of whom started leaving cones in rough spots to warn others, or took to smoothing out blocks themselves as “pothole vigilantes” — Oakland launched a $100 million, three-year repaving program earlier this year. That notorious stretch of Harold Street was finally fixed over the summer.

Some Bay Area cities with the best streets achieved their high scores thanks to new taxes that voters approved to give themselves smoother rides.

El Cerrito residents passed a half-cent sales tax in 2008 that funded repairs to aging streets, which Goodwin credited for an impressive turnaround. No city has improved its streets over the past decade as much as El Cerrito, according to the MTC report, which increased its pavement quality score by 33 points since 2008. The increase moved the city from the “at risk” range to the “very good/excellent” category.

Seeing El Cerrito’s success, other cities, including Orinda and Moraga, have passed similar measures, Goodwin said. And more are eyeing such taxes as a path to better streets.

The biggest decline in the Bay Area was Concord’s, whose roads have dropped by 18 points on the MTC’s scale since 2008, leaving the city with a 60-point score that puts it at the bottom of the “fair” range. City spokeswoman Jennifer Ortega said the decline came after Concord’s city council cut funding for road maintenance during the recession to preserve money for other services.

“Without regular maintenance, we see the roads deteriorating faster,” Ortega said.

Recently, though, Concord has tried to turn the ship around. The city council approved a five-year, $27 million maintenance plan in spring 2018 that funded repairs to busy streets such as Farm Bureau Road and Ygnacio Valley Road. But the plan will have to compete for funding in the city’s budget process, which Ortega said is shaping up to be tight this year.

She said Concord is now looking into whether a new tax like the one El Cerrito passed could be a way to fund those improvements, with discussions expected to ramp up next year.

“We certainly are going to need a larger allocation” for road maintenance, Ortega said. “Our city council is considering all options.”