Without Money, Its Only Caltrans Dreaming (Hey Dems - Where Did All The Freeway Fund Money Go Alert)

Caltrans announced Tuesday its preferred method for improving the 405-101 freeway interchange, which the agency says is one of the busiest in the world. But don't get too excited. The agency also says that it doesn't have the money to design or build the project, which is expected to cost about $135 million.

Still, this is one of those classic bottlenecks, and understanding why it doesn't work helps explain a lot of other bottlenecks on Southern California freeways.

The big problem is that entrance and exit ramps have been placed too close to one another. The particular issue on the 405 is that traffic trying to merge onto the freeway from the Burbank Boulevard onramp immediately must merge with traffic trying to leave the 405 for the exit to the 101.

That means a lot of weaving and braking, the reason that the area scores low on Caltrans' measurement of traffic speeds.

As a Caltrans engineer, I have my ideas.

First, after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, there was a mad rush to shore up all of the State’s bridges and make them earthquake resistant. That sucked up a HUGE amount of funds that nobody was expecting to have to spend. Not on a global basis like that. This all came under the “earthquake retrofit” program.

We passed Prop 192 in 1996 for about $2 billion to fix all the state’s bridges and bring them up to current code for earthquakes. Well, of course we spent much more than that. I don’t know how much more.

Look at the cost to replace the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. You are looking at north of $5 BILLION for that single bridge alone. Welcome to modern day America...

All the bridge work is winding down and that is going to free up money. Unfortunately, gas sales and resulting gas taxes are falling fast due to $5/gallong gas. All those big SUVs on the road sent a lot of extra money to road work that a fleet of Priuses is not going to replace. Since 18-wheel Semis do most of the damage to highways (one loaded semi which weighs about 80,000 pounds, does the same pavement damage as 1000 cars), the reduced income from less SUVs will mean less revenue to fix the roads.

So you are going to get ay less road work in the future if gas prices stay high.

There is waste and inefficiency but I think roads will get more money once all the bridge work is done. Stealing money from transportation for the General Fund should have ended by passing Proposition 42 in 2002, but I don’t know if a new end run was found since then.

We still spend too much on idiocy like advertising for car pools. $5 gas has done more for car pools than all the tens of $millions Caltrans spent on trying to force/coerce people to car pool, but those parts of Caltrans always attract the liberal do-gooder Utopiods, just like our environmental sections do. They forget who they work for and want to save the planet rather than get projects built.

That’s my take. Maybe others know better.

Maybe if we didn’t spent 50% of every tax dollar on education spending, we would have more money to fix the potholed and broken pavement. You can forget reducing pavement, as the FEDGOV and environmentalist won’t allow us to add many lanes, and the ones they allow have to be HOV lanes. HAVE TO BE.

The environmentalists want severe traffic congestion as badly as they want high gas costs. Anything to get you out of your car and on the bus or a bicycle.

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