The Bay Area cities with the most poorly maintained streets and roads

When guessing the Bay Area cities with less-than-stellar street pavement quality, a few places come to mind. Oakland's roads are particularly notorious, causing some frustrated residents to begin patching potholes themselves in the middle of the night.

Recent data published by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) supports this notoriety, ranking Oakland's roads in the "at risk" range with a pavement condition index (PCI) score of 53 out of a maximum of 100 points.

But eight Bay Area jurisdictions ranked lower than this, five of which landed in the "poor" range — meaning the MTC has determined these roads require "major rehabilitation or reconstruction." PCI scores are judged based on factors such as pavement age, climate and precipitation, traffic loads and available maintenance funding, according to the MTC's website.

Jurisdictions in the "poor" range include Vallejo (which is home to its own group of "pothole vigilantes"), unincorporated communities in Napa County, Sebastopol, Petaluma and — in last place — Pacifica. The quaint, beachside town received a PCI score of 42, and city officials aren't exactly surprised.

"If you go back and look at the history, you'll see that Pacifica has actually been toward the bottom for some time," said Lisa Petersen, Pacifica's public works director.

She added that when it comes to street maintenance, the issue of neglected roads almost always boils down to funding. "Any kind of city, when you see their pavement quality is dropping, or they're in the lower categories, it's pretty much always related to annual funding," Petersen said.

According to Pacifica's most recent budget options report for its Street Maintenance Program, sticking to the same rate the city was investing in its streets during 2019 — $800,000 per year — would drop its PCI score to 38 over a five-year period. The report states that in order to maintain Pacifica's 2019 PCI score of 46, the city would have needed to spend $3.5 million a year on streets, $2.7 million more than what was being spent at the time.

Pacifica now spends about $1.2 million on street maintenance, according to the city's budget for 2021-22. But it hasn't been enough to maintain roads, and the city's PCI score has dropped several points over the past three years as a result.

"The more money you put into it, the more you're going to get in terms of these pavement condition indexes," Petersen said.

Over the hills, nearby Menlo Park — which is also in San Mateo County, and covers only about 10 more miles of streets than Pacifica does — spent close to $1.7 million on road maintenance from 2020-21, according to a recent budget report. The city ranked high in the "good" category, with a PCI score of 79.

Cupertino, which ranked first on the MTC's list with a score of 84, has a street maintenance budget of nearly $4.6 million for this fiscal year. It was one of six Bay Area cities to land in the chart's "very good" range, among Orinda, Palo Alto, Dublin, Brentwood and unincorporated Solano County.

"Pacifica just hasn't had the economic base that other cities do," Petersen said. "Even for a similar size public works department, I have 25% less staff than other cities do. We're not like Palo Alto or some of these cities that have a larger business and tax base."

As a whole, the MTC's data ranked Bay Area streets and roads at an average score of 67, placing them in the "fair" range. This is the sixth year in a row that Bay Area streets have received this score, and while that may not seem promising, it does show that for the most part, cities have been able to avoid major road deterioration. This is partly thanks to funding from Senate Bill 1, which allocated cities and counties $1.5 billion per year for street maintenance.

San Francisco's PCI score has stayed in the "good" range at 74 for three years now, ranking it the highest among the Bay Area's three largest cities and the only one to rank higher than "fair."