Golis: Formula for gridlock: More cars, more miles, fewer dollars

I drive a car, and apparently I'm not the only one. On Sunday afternoon, we drove south to a Father's Day celebration in San Francisco, and it took us two hours and 15 minutes to reach our destination. Average speed: 25 miles per hour.

From the Cotati Grade to somewhere between Petaluma and Novato, Highway 101 looked more like a parking lot than a highway. We never found out where the gridlock stopped. Taking the advice of real-time navigation we fled to an alternate route - down Lakeville Highway, then back to Novato on Highway 37. Once upon a time, this would not have been considered a shortcut.

Getting around in our automobiles isn't getting easier, is it? In my neighborhood, I've memorized the locations of the deepest potholes, having learned them the hard way. Clunk!

When it comes to highways and streets, years of neglect have left state and local governments in a deep hole. In February, the state Department of Transportation estimated there is a $59 billion shortfall in the state's 10-year transportation maintenance budget - and a $79 billion shortfall in city and county maintenance budgets.

For the 90,000-plus drivers who venture each day into what's known as the Novato Narrows, there was good news last week. Marin and Sonoma County officials seem to have moved past their spat over how to divide $18 million in federal funds that have been sitting around since 2005.

Most of the money, $15 million, will be combined with existing money to advance plans to build 5 miles of carpool lanes between Petaluma and the Sonoma-Marin county line. Construction could begin late next year or early in 2018, Staff Writer Guy Kovner reported.

It's not enough money to eliminate the entire length of the bottleneck between Petaluma and Novato, but it's a start.

More than three in five Californians believe spending more money on roads and highways is “very important,” the Public Policy Institute of California reported Tuesday.

Unfortunately, there remains a disconnect between what state residents want and what they're willing to pay for. Fewer than one in five supports an increase in vehicle fees or gasoline taxes, the survey found. With so little public support, it shouldn't be surprising that the state Legislature remains on the sidelines.

Fewer than half of all Californians, according to the survey, would support a local transportation sales tax.

Sound familiar? Last year, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors asked voters to approve a sales tax to pay for road repairs. In an election that cost $450,000, the measure was clobbered, winning barely 38 percent of the vote.

With the largest road system in the Bay Area, Sonoma County's roads perennially rank among the worst.

Staff Writer Angela Hart reported last week that road crews and contractors will be repairing almost 170 miles of road this summer, in part because Sonoma is among a handful counties that devotes General Fund money to road repairs.

That hasn't stopped critics from saying the county isn't doing enough. Listening to their arguments, we are left to wonder what other law enforcement and social service programs must be curtailed because vehicle fees and gas taxes aren't keeping pace with the costs of building and maintaining streets, roads, bridges and highways.

In the age of hybrid and electric cars, people are driving more miles than ever before and using less gasoline - which means they're paying less in gas taxes. In addition, the state continues to reduce tax rates (complying with the arcane calculations prescribed in a 2010 law that replaced a sales tax on gasoline with an excise tax). The latest rate reduction, 2.2 cents, arrives Friday.

With revenues declining, the state Transportation Commission this year was compelled to reduce spending in the five-year transportation improvement plan by $754 million and to abandon 200 previously authorized projects. Commission members also warned that unless the Legislature acts, more projects will be soon be shelved.

In January, the Los Angeles Times reported, Gov. Jerry Brown warned, “We have no choice but to maintain our transportation infrastructure. Yet, doing so without an expanded and permanent revenue source is impossible. That means at some point, sooner rather than later, we have to bite the bullet and enact new fees and taxes for this purpose.”

Meanwhile, the cost of everything associated with transportation spending, including state and federal regulations, continues to erode the buying power of existing dollars.

In recent years, Americans have read so many stories about their crumbling infrastructure that they barely pay attention anymore. In the April 18 New Yorker, economics writer James Surowiecki described “how underinvestment and political dysfunction have left America with infrastructure that's failing and often downright dangerous.”

As the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors can attest, the public antipathy toward new taxes speaks to the widespread distrust of government. Some of this distrust is deserved. The rest testifies to the success of a popular dogma that says government can never be trusted.

Here's the problem: If we don't trust government to do this job, there will be no one else. We will be left to more of the same, including escalating costs, crumbling roads and the daily grind of traffic gridlock.

It doesn't have to be this way, and in other days, it wasn't.

Pete Golis is a columnist for The Press Democrat. Email him at golispd@gmail.com.