Transportation officials say there isn't enough money to maintain Sacramento roads
SACRAMENTO — Three thousand miles. That's the distance to Miami but also how many miles of roads the city of Sacramento has to maintain. Now, transportation officials say they don't have enough money to keep up.
Streets around the city are filled with cracks, bumps, ruts and plenty of potholes.
"Every road I drive down, there's a pothole," driver Robert Briley said. "It's bad."
Briley and other drivers are worried about those bad roads causing damage to their cars.
"Popped tires, shocks, the wear and tear on your vehicle," driver Maya Barries said.
"This is a Cadillac and it shouldn't be abused like that," Briley said of his vehicle.
Transportation officials rank the roads on a scale of 1 to 100 using what's called the pavement condition index. In the city of Sacramento, the average is currently 55, which is considered "fair." County roads are even worse, averaging 46 on the scale.
So why are Sacramento roads so bad?
"It's a situation where we just don't have the budget for it," said Matt Robinson with the Sacramento County Department of Transportation.
Robinson said Sacramento County spends $30 million a year repairing roads, but there's an $800-million maintenance backlog.
"We try and take care of the worst places first to make sure that all of our roads are at least passable," Robinson said.
The City of Sacramento spends nearly $12 million a year and says many of the worst roads are in historically disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Transportation officials say last year's strong winter storms made things even worse.
"When we had all the rain, that did a lot more damage to the roads and, unfortunately, we're having to fix those first before we can get to those that we were already working on fixing," Robinson said.
Drivers say they're not seeing any improvements.
"I would say they're getting worse," Barries said. "I've lived here for the past five years and I haven't seen any improvement."
"The best option for us would be to take bad roads, tear them all up and repave them over again, but we can't do that because we don't have enough money," Robinson said.
Drivers are encouraged to call 311 and report potholes so they can be patched up before they cause any damage.
