The 5 freeway from Beach Boulevard in Garden Grove to the Los Angeles County line in Buena Park is one of the roughest roads in the nation, states a report released today by two highway advocacy groups.
“Future Mobility in California: The Condition, Use and Funding of California's Roads, Bridges and Transit System,” which was jointly created by Washington, D.C.-based The Road Information Program (TRIP) and the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials, finds that LA has the country's worst roads, with 92 percent of major roads in the metro area in poor or mediocre condition.
The Orange County section of the 5 freeway is cited among the most deteriorated roads in the LA area. There is no separate report for Orange County, which also does not pop up in the Riverside-San Bernardino report.
]
States the LA report, which you can download here:
Roads,
bridges and transit systems that are deficient, congested or lack
desirable safety features cost the average Los Angeles motorist a total
of $2,462 each year, a total of
$40 billion statewide, due to higher vehicle operating costs, traffic crashes and congestion-related delays.
TRIP's California page includes a separate chart titled “The Cost of Driving on Poor Roads in California's 20 Largest Urban Areas.”
It breaks down the additional costs (such as repairs) each driver must
shell out to ply the shitty drive roads in each area. For LA, the cost
is $746 per driver. The only Orange County area represented in Mission
Viejo, where 37 percent of the roads are deemed poor and drivers pay
$571 in additional costs to drive them.
The LA report calls for
“an increased investment in transportation improvements at the state
and federal level” to “relieve traffic congestion, improve road, bridge
and transit conditions, boost safety and support long-term economic
growth in California.” The Riverside-San Bernardino report seems to
make a stronger case for investing in public transportation there–in
addition to road improvements, of course.
“It is critical that the state adequately fund its transportation system and that Congress
produces a timely and adequately funded federal surface transportation program,” says Will Wilkins, TRIP's executive director. “Thousands of jobs and the state's economy are riding on it.”
Bumpily.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.