Local California Roads Continue To Crumble

We’ve all experienced it, the cringe-inducing moment when your car thumps into an unavoidable pothole. A report out from the League of California Cities and the California State Association of Counties says the roads could get a lot bumpier in the years to come.

The biennial report finds local road and bridge conditions in California continue to deteriorate. And C-SAC Executive Director Matt Cate says conditions could get worse.

"In a decade, if we continue on the current path, we estimate that 25 percent of California’s roads will be in a failed condition," he says, "meaning that the engineers who do these inspections can no longer certify them as being safe to drive on."

The report also finds, in 10 years, California cities and counties will face $78 billion in differed street maintenance. The state has allocated $1.8 billion for local road maintenance in this year’s budget. But Cate says as more people use electric cars, fewer are paying the gas tax, which is a major revenue source for road repairs.