Opinion: California deserves better roads
By Dan Walters, Sacramento Bee
Let’s start with the basics about California’s highway network, which a few decades ago was considered to be among the world’s best.
It was mostly constructed in the three decades that followed World War II, as California’s population boomed and vehicular travel exploded.
Dan Walters
Eventually, however, just about when Jerry Brown began his first governorship, highway construction slowed dramatically for a wide variety of ideological (both left and right) and financial reasons.
Nevertheless, vehicular travel continued to expand, along with population and economic activity. It’s roughly twice what it was 30 years ago, even though California’s population has increased by about 50 percent.
The slowing of capacity-increasing construction and the steady growth of auto travel eventually resulted in California having the nation’s worst traffic congestion, according to the Federal Highway Administration.