The roads around the former Weekly world headquarters not withstanding, Orange County has the best roads in California. That's not fair: I have not been back to that area of Santa Ana in a couple months, when I had a hankering for a taco off the truck that parks on Sycamore Street. But then and the whole five years or whatever it was our offices were near there, the crack-, crevice- and pothole-filled surface streets jarred many a front-end alignment. Lowriders didn't need hydraulics to bounce!
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Oh … yes … this is supposed to be about Orange County's good roads. The survey by the California State Association of Counties, the League of California Cities and several transportation agencies found that on a scale of 0 to 100 (worst to best), the condition of pavement on Orange County streets averages a score of 77.
Measure M, the half cent Orange County sales tax for transportation improvements that was renewed by voters for 30 years in 2006, is getting the credit for keeping most of our roads smooth. It's put $70 million back into the streets annually, according to the Orange County Transportation Agency (OCTA).
“Between now and 2041, it'll put $5 billion into the streets and road system in Orange County,” OCTA CEO Darrell Johnson recently told KABC/Channel 7. He also credited “good management by the cities.”
Including Santa Ana, one presumes. … Hmmm … gotta bounce; I need a potato taco.
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
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.