California's 40 million residents now use freeways designed for a population of 20 million.
Posted on 07/01/2015 10:31:21 PM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
California keeps reminding us what has gone astray with America in recent years.
The state is in the midst of a crippling four-year-old drought. Yet it has built almost no major northern or central mountain reservoirs since the New Melones Dam of 1979. That added nearly 3 million acre-feet to the state's storage reserves — a critical project that was almost canceled by endless environmental lawsuits and protests.
Although California has almost doubled in population since the dam's construction, its politicians apparently decided that completing more northern and Sierra Nevada water projects was passe. So the parched state now prays for rain and snow rather than building reservoirs to ensure that the next drought won't shut down the state.
Curiously, once infrastructure projects such as the New Melones Dam are finished, few seem to complain about the life-saving water they provide the public in times of existential drought.
California has taught the nation its unique hypocrisy. We have stopped the Keystone Pipeline for now, but if it gets built eventually, few consumers will complain that it transfers oil at a cheap cost and with greater safety.
California has also schooled the nation on mutually exclusively goals. Its lax immigration policies have made for a rapidly expanding population, and yet it expects a sophisticated infrastructure that ensures plentiful, clean water — and dreams of a pristine, green, 19th-century paradise in a depopulated state.
California's major north-south highway laterals — the 99, 101 and I-5 "freeways" — often descend into deadly traffic quagmires. They were designed for a state of less than 20 million people, not one of more than 40 million. Recent national surveys have rated the state's road system as nearly last in the nation.
Most forget that California once all but invented the modern idea of a freeway.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
California's 40 million residents now use freeways designed for a population of 20 million.
Wow. Next time try width=”600px”
Crumbling infrastructure in those pictures.
Dare I say it?
Collapsenifornia!
Not just crumbling infrastructure, but obama-scratch grafitti, too. California is so barack ghettobama.
Add to the heap, LAX, which gives tourists a pitiful impression of the United States.
This leaves me shaking my head, as the daughter of California pioneers. As a new bride in 1959 I moved from CA to IL and was astonished to see the mid-west suffering from annual floods, droughts, and other weather events. I couldn’t understand it. California, my native state, had controlled the weather and the water supply. Water was collected in reservoirs during the wet season and distributed statewide, as needed.
Californians no longer suffered from the floods that had once stranded ships on dry land in the Sacramento Valley in the late 1800s (North Central Valley) or repeated floods in my home town of Fresno that dissolved adobe houses in the 1920s. Farmers had water when they turned a valve, and everybody else had a chain of lakes for unlimited recreational use.
The University system had capped its flagship Universities at 26,000 top students each, leaving much of the rest of the education burden to the State colleges (which could not offer PhDs), and the Jr. colleges which were free to all with a high school diploma.
Why couldn’t other states be so advanced in their thinking and their planning, I asked?
I’d ask where it all went wrong, but I was back in CA and witnessed that downturn in the 1960s and 1970s with the influx of draft dodgers and radical youth from the east looking for a cheap education and freedom from their parents’ rules.
What a mess it has become.
Sorry about that. I wanted to show the cracks in the overhead. I had 2 choices — thumbnail, or this.
Thanks for posting. Enjoy VDH.
Two sizes? Hardly. Learn the image width attribute.
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_img_width.asp
A close examination of the supposed cracks in the overhead which you mentioned would have revealed trails of vine stems sans leaves. Please note that some of those “cracks” extend over the lowermost horizontal railing of the fencing and concrete above. Ivy growing across the face of overpasses is not uncommon. The lack of leaves may be as a result of the stems having been separated from the root.
There are cracks in the overhead of most legislators in California which is why I analyze from afar.
LOL! Very good article by VDH. Thanks for posting.
It's a microcosm of tax and spend marxist micro-mismanagement.
yes, and California’s 40 million residents now also use a water supply system designed for 2o million at best
VDH’s articles are ALL very good and worth savoring.
"According to estimates from 2011, California has the largest minority population in the United States by numbers, making up 60% of the state population"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California#Racial_and_ancestral_makeup
It used to be such a Republican state. And then that activist son took over the LA Times in the '60s... look what he has created.
Read Andrew Breitbart's "Righteous Indignation" for a good recap of the political history of southern California. He traces the destruction back to Marxist college professors who escaped persecution in Germany in the 1940s and came to teach at the colleges in southern California. They were nasty, miserable people and spread their parasitic disease throughout this once thriving state until it is a wasted corpse.
Don’t dismiss the decay caused by professors in Northern CA (Bezerkley).
I need to add that conservatives in Northern CA used to depend on So, CA to bail them out in elections. Orange Co. used to save the day with every gubenatorial and presidential election.
To whom are you referring when you say “activist son” took over the LA Times? My memory is good, but not THAT good (especially since I lived in Bezerkely in the ‘60s.)
Wasn’t it around 2000 when the LA Times became more stridently liberal? Oddly enough, I think it was under Tribune Media, partially owned by the Koch brothers.
I think his name was Chandler. I saw a PBS special about him, and of course they made him out to be a big hero. His father ( or grandfather?) had Been the editor and had been very conservative. He took over in the 60s and. changed all that, focusing on hippies, environmental issues, Vietnam and destroying Nixon.
Otis Chandler replaced Norman Chandler, his father.
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