Worst larger city roads, San Jose, CA is #1

Silicon Valley Mercury News/John Woolfolk, 2/24/13.  "San Jose road tax table."  "San Jose's roads are starting to fall apart after a decade of budgetary red ink. Cracks and potholes multiply like spring weeds, the pavement ranks worst in the county and motorists are griping more than ever about rougher rides through town.

Nope its San Jose, not Pacifica

City officials have a plan to fix all this, and will give it an airing before the City Council on March 5. But San Jose residents, grab your wallets, because it's going to cost you. "Funding sources we relied on over past decades are insufficient to cover current needs," said Hans Larsen, San Jose's transportation director.  The solution, he said, is new taxes -- plural. City officials aren't thinking about one tax measure but three to pay for San Jose's current and ongoing road repair and maintenance needs.

San Jose, not us again

.... Larsen has urged city officials to pursue the higher half-cent measure, arguing the estimated revenue of up to $64 million a year would be enough to ensure a significant slice for roads. A quarter-cent tax would deliver about half as much revenue.  Larsen also is recommending the city seek to "amend and extend" the 30-year half-cent countywide sales tax that voters approved in 2000 to pay for BART and other public transit. The idea would be to continue the tax forever and allow some of the proceeds to be spent on city streets instead of just transit.  But that's not all. To tackle the backlog of road repairs, Larsen is recommending a $295 million street repair bond measure, which would cost the average homeowner about $100 a year. San Francisco voters in 2011 passed a $248 million bond measure that included $148 million to repair streets, with the balance to be used for bikeways, sidewalks, traffic signals and curb ramps."  Read article.  Note:  Upper right picture from this article.  

Related -  San Jose.com, 9/23/10. "It's official.  San Jose has the worst Roads." From the embedded National Transport Research Group (TRIP) report." San Jose has the worst roads in the U.S., with 64 percent of the city’s roads in poor condition."  Worst USA urban roads:  1) San Jose, 2) Los Angeles, 3) Honolulu, 4) Concord, CA, 5) San Francisco-Oakland, 6) New Orleans, 7) New York-Newark, 8) San Diego, 9) Indio-Palm Springs, 10) Baltimore, 11) Kansas City, 12) Riverside-San Bernardino, 13) Oklahoma City, 14) Sacramento, 15 Omaha, NE, 16) San Antonia, 17) Detroit, 18) Philadelphia, 19) Tulsa, 20) Dallas-Fort Worth.."The poor roads take a toll on local drivers, who end up paying $600 to $750 more on car repairs every year because of potholes, cracks, and bumps."  Note: lower left picture from this article.

Posted by Kathy Meeh