San Francisco Bay Area roads aren’t getting any better, but at least they aren’t getting any worse, according to data released Tuesday by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission on the region’s pavement quality.
The MTC, the transportation planning, financing and coordinating agency for the nine-county Bay Area, put its 2020 pavement condition index score at 67 out of 100, in the fair range with 0 representing a failed road and 100 meaning a brand-new or resurfaced roadway.
That PCI number of 67, computed on a three-year moving average, has remained the same for five years, which MTC officials said points toward the continued challenges faced by public works departments locally to maintain aging roads.
San Francisco has a three-year moving average of 74, the highest of the Bay Area’s three largest cities compared to 66 for San Jose and 52 for Oakland. Cupertino had the highest PCI rankings over the previous three years at 85, with other cities in the 80s including Dublin, Palo Alto, Brentwood, Clayton, Orinda, Woodside, Danville and Foster City.
The pavement ranked the Bay Area’s worst in the data was found in the coastal San Mateo County city of Pacifica, which had a PCI of 42. Others below 50 included Petaluma, Sebastopol and Vallejo.
Commission officials in a news release cited the importance of tax measures, such as the state’s Senate Bill 1 gas tax approved in 2017 and local sales taxes in cities like Orinda, in helping to fund the roadwork just to maintain the status quo.
“Local streets and roads money from the SB 1 transportation package is helping counties and cities hold the line against deterioration, but our goal at MTC is to raise the region’s average PCI score into the mid-80s.
The data give us a real appreciation for just how many miles of roadway the Bay Area has and a reminder of how old a lot of our pavement is, too,” MTC chair and Napa County Supervisor Alfredo Pedroza said in a statement.
35 comments
Not in Concord.I don’t where they are getting there information.LMAO
This was report obviously old, as after the rains last week the roads are falling apart, large potholes and asphalt coming loose on almost every concord road ive driven.
.
Are county-maintained roads rated?
CoCo County would be graded very low… just slightly higher than a dirt road
I’m going to take a wild guess that this is just being said so our roads won’t be fixed. I have been to other states and seriously our roads here in CA suck a**.
What a load of baloney.
Roads are getting worse by the day.
It’s just the gov’t lying to make the masses feel better.
Those who believe the gov’t, that is…
Cellophane’s Street Grading Service.
Better to have some road than no road at all.
I’d rather drive a boat.
I’m sure they must be right. I looked at one of their papers and they have a PCI (Pavement Condition Index), a PCR (Pavement Condition Rating), a PIC (Pavement Improvement Center), and a PMS (Pavement Management System). Their lives are pavement. I wonder what they do on weekends.
They make asphalt.
They explain what PMS is to their wives.
Pretty sure the roads I drive are getting worse.
Seems to me it stands to reason – If “they aren’t getting better” (no one is repairing them) and people are still using them, they have to get worse.
Please stop using logic and reason to explain things!
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t there a 12 cent per gallon gas tax imposed on California citizens a few years ago? Correct me if I’m wrong again, but didn’t the California government Democrats promise that the 12 cent per gallon gas tax would be used for road repairs? I could be wrong(again), but the roads I commute on daily, and the roads I travel on regularly throughout the Bay Area have pretty much gotten zero maintenance and repair.
It makes one think – how many gallons of gas are purchased daily in California, and much much gas tax money is the government taking in each day? And the big question is, where is all that money going?
They didn’t say which roads would be fixed. Southern CA roads obviously needed your money more than the roads you use. It has taken 30 plus years to get highway 4 widened from PCH to Martinez. That bottleneck both morning and evening was hell.
@Bluebird~
Correct,….didn’t say which roads, but think we need some here too.
Hwy 4 is almost done, which costs were big time.
Hope to see other Bay Area roads done soon.
Agree,… We put enough $$$ in the pot and should see a difference.
Can you say B S
YVR in Walnut Creek near I-680 is 100 now, since they just repaved it. Clayton Road in Concord needs some work though.
Go drive around the corner of Meadow Lane and Market Street and repeat the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s statement from the first paragraph with a straight face.
Concord has some really bad streets, and Meadow Lane is the worst street in town.
From the report, which you can find at https://mtc.ca.gov/sites/default/ files/documents/2021-11/PCI_table-2020_data%20%2800F%29.pdf
TLM* 2018 2019 2020
Concord 716.9 60 60 59
Clayton 94.2 84 82 81
Contra Costa 7,178 70 70 70
*Total Lane Miles
The Regional Weighted PCI was 66 from 2011 to 2014, and from 2015 to 2020 it was 67.
The grading scale from the report:
Very Good (PCI = 80 – 89)
Good (PCI = 70 – 79)
Fair (PCI = 60 – 69)
At Risk (PCI = 50 – 59)
Poor (PCI = 25 – 49)
If only the people who made this grading scale were the ones who graded my tests back when I was in school. They think that the average Bay area road is of fair quality. They think that the roads in Concord have just recently edged into the “At Risk” category.
It seems that the tab character gets stripped out of comments on this site, here’s a (hopefully) more readable table
| Total Lane Miles | 2018 | 2019 | 2020
Concord | 716.9 | 60 | 60 | 59
Clayton | 94.2 | 84 | 82 | 81
Contra Costa | 7,178 | 70 | 70 | 70
It’s very easy to say “quality remains level” when it could not possible get much worse.
Lie in bed at night and watch headlights wave up and down the wall as passing cars bounce up and down the road. And we’re on one of Concord’s more recently “top-schmeared” streets.
I’ve been in Third-World countries who’s roads put ours to shame.
Seriously, how hard is it to get these idiots to fix the pot holes?
Having our gas tax at $1 or more CA. No moneys for roads more for Gen funds.
There is nothing level about our roads
So higher gas taxes result in the same “level” of potholes? The rest of the nation should study the Kleptofornica model.
But the gas tax is going to fix the roads. I saw how well the lottery fixed the schools.
More leftist news media or media mob news. Our roads suck big time. Where does all of the additional gas taxes go????? Into Newsom’s slush fund to go to the French Laundry and take care of family matters?
Fellow citizens we need to keep knawing away at the corruption that is so rampant all over and keep the ball rolling like in Virginia’s recent election. The people’s voices must be heard and stopped being suppressed by the media mob.
Stnad up and make the changes needed before all is lost.
Thanks for letting me rant.
We inspected ourselves and found that we are doing just fine. Now keep giving us your money serfs.
I agree that Bay Area roads suck big time! That being said, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. One is that decades of deferred maintenance will not be corrected over night – Even with gas tax increases (which I believe had not kept up with inflation until perhaps the last increase anyway). Another is that each fully electric vehicle you see on the road (Tesla et al.) is using the road for free and not paying towards road maintenance with regards to gas taxes as they don’t use any gas. So, there are more and more vehicles on the roads every day that are using them, but not contributing towards road maintenance.
Excellent point ECEP; and those “cool” E Cars are using up more and more electricity that we are unable to keep up with.
Excellent point ECEP; and those “cool” E Cars are using up more and more electricity that we are unable to keep up with.
ExPat is right on about the Ecars not paying their fair share for roads.
And, they are using up more electricity than we can keep up with. Trouble ahead for all of us.
What about Concord? I thought our roads were needing repair right away and that is why we needed Measure V so bad.
After a while, these roads have done so much damage to one’s suspension, nothing but a $2,000 repair bill will make anything “level,” again.
You have got to be kidding me. Pavement quality index score! Ha! That is Saturday night live worthy. They have been over taxing us by the billions to supposedly pay for our crumbling roads. It’s the usual bait and switch process to take our cash and pay for anything other than what they deem it necessary to pay for. Occasionally they improve a few roads to throw a bone at us but c’mon pouring some slurry seal on top of decrepit concrete doesn’t cut it. The seal doesn’t even last three years. Like many have said, Concord roads continue to be in horrendous condition….
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