The Department of Transportation (Caltrans) has oversight of California's transportation networks. Its responsibilities include managing 15,192.06 miles of roadway that, in 2009, carried 177 billion vehicle miles of travel. Caltrans, which is by far the largest department in the Business, Housing and Transportation Agency, also oversees inter-city rail services and grants permits for more than 400 public-use airports and special-use hospital heliports. Since the 1990s, Caltrans has adopted policies aimed at integrating single-vehicle roadway traffic with carpools and mass transit. It is developing highway technology that incorporates fiber communications, ramp metering, cameras, changeable message signs, and traffic loop monitoring stations to improve efficiency.

2009 California Public Road Data (Caltrans website) (pdf)

Advanced Transportation System Engineering (Caltrans website)

At first, road construction and administration in California was entirely local, with people making horse trails and wagon roads as needed. But soon after California achieved statehood in 1850, the Legislature created the Office of Surveyor General, charged with suggesting new roads. According to state roadway hobbyist and historian Daniel Faigin, the first route to receive state approval was the Emigrant Wagon Road between the Carson Valley in Nevada and the Sacramento area. Legislators authorized up to $105,000 for the project, but never appropriated the funds. Instead, they began granting franchises to build toll roads. The Emigrant Wagon Road was finished in November 1858. In 1864, railroad entrepreneurs completed another toll route, the Dutch Flat and Donner Lake Wagon Road, over the Sierra Nevada.

In 1885, legislators established the state Bureau of Highways. California was one of the first states to name a highway commission, assigning it responsibility for roadways throughout California. That three-member Bureau of Highways Commission would grow over the next century into a huge bureaucracy with responsibility for planning, funding, designing, building and maintaining a broad range of transportation systems.

Commissioners R.C. Irvine of Sacramento, Marsden Manson of San Francisco and J.L. Maude of Riverside convened their first meeting in Sacramento on April 11, 1895. The three began by taking a horse-and-buggy tour of the footpaths and rutted wagon routes that were the state's closest approach to a highway system. Eighteen months later, they presented their recommendation for a 14,000-road network that would become the basis for California's highway system. Setting the stage for a century of complaints about state road maintenance, their Nov. 25, 1896, report said that, “The conditions of highways in California today is the result of generations of neglect and apathy.”

The commissioners recommended that the state government build a highway system to include 28 routes, with a total length of about 4,500 miles. But legislators reportedly feared that this would give Sacramento too much power over the system and inserted provisions that permitted the counties greater control, including the ability to add an unlimited amount of additional routes.

For the next several years, as roadbuilding efforts progressed, lawmakers continued to wrangle over recommendations for centralized planning and control, countered by fears that such centralization would lead to an undue concentration of power.

In 1897, lawmakers replaced the Bureau of Highways with the Department of Highways, which had  three commissioners appointed for two year terms, and a civil engineer appointed for a four-year term. The state took control of the Emigrant Wagon Road (renamed the Lake Tahoe Toll Road), but the new department's recommendations were frequently ignored, thwarted by fears of centralized state power. Still, in 1902 the state Constitution was amended to give the Legislature authority to establish a system of state highways, and to pass the laws necessary to fund it. Five years later,  state lawmakers  dissolved the Department of Highways, replacing it with a Department of Engineering, the forerunner of the Department of Public Works. Highway funding was provided by the Legislature through appropriations that were kept low and were devoted to maintenance, such as clearing storm debris and or building retaining walls.

The real impetus to highway construction came in 1909, when the Legislature authorized the first State Highway Bond Act, which authorized construction of 3,052 miles of highway. Voters approved the $18 million appropriation the following year. The funding allowed a significant quantity of highways to start construction.

From that date, Caltrans records the following historical benchmarks:

1912: The first state highway construction contract was awarded for Highway 1, El Camino Real, Pacific Coast route.

1916: The passage of the federal  Bankhead Act provided a 50% federal subsidy for construction costs on  roads that would improve rural mail delivery. 

1923: The first state gas tax was created, starting at 2 cents per gallon,  to fund the highway system expansion. Accompanying legislation  created funds for maintenance, repair, widening, resurfacing, and reconstruction of state highways and roads and highways in state parks. The tax law included a prohibition against  using this revenue for new construction, but this prohibition was lifted in 1927 with the passage of the Breed Bill, adding $0.01 to the gasoline tax. The additional tax was to be used exclusively for highway construction. The new law also required that 51% of construction funds be allocated to Northern California, and 49% of the monies to Southern California.

1934: The state sign route numbering system was adopted.

1936: The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opened to traffic.

1937: State Route 1, also know as Pacific Coast Highway, finished construction, the first complete north-south highway in California. That same year saw the completion of the Golden Gate Bridge. While it is an important transportation component and state landmark, it is not part of the state highway system; it was designed, constructed, maintained, and is still owned, by the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway, and Transportation District.

1940: The Arroyo-Seco Parkway, California’s first freeway, was dedicated on December 30, 1940. This project marked the beginning of the freeway era in the Golden State.

1947: The passage of the Collier-Burns Act provided $76 million annually for new construction of highways.  Gas and diesel taxes were raised by 1.5 cents per gallon and driver license and registration fees were increased.

1953: California’s gas tax was increased to 6 cents per gallon to fund the improvement of the highway system.

1956: President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. Under the Act, the federal government supplied 90% of funding for interstate highways with the state paying the remaining 10%.

1960: The Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley served as impetus to build Interstate 80, the  first all-weather, trans-Sierra Nevada highway.

1961: California established the Highway Transportation Agency, consisting of the Department of Public Works (including the Division of Highways), the Department of Motor Vehicles and the California Highway Patrol.

1963: The first rapid transit funding was authorized with the passage of the Collier-Unruh Act. This bill allowed counties to increase state in-lieu taxes by half a cent for development of rapid transit systems. The Legislature also increased the gasoline tax to 7 cents a gallon.

1964: State lawmakers instituted a new system for numbering state highways, effective July 1, 1964.

1965: The Highway Transportation Agency was renamed the Transportation Agency.

1969: The Business and Transportation Agency was formed from the departments and boards of Aeronautics, Highway Patrol, Corporations, Housing and Community Development, Insurance Motor Vehicles, Public Works (which included the Division of Highways), Real Estate, Savings and Loan, and State Banking.

1970: The first High-Occupancy Vehicle Lane opened in the San Francisco Bay area. A one-half mile, peak period, west-bound bus lane was installed through the toll plaza of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge on April 20. The HOV lane also was included in an experimental bus and car pool lane program instituted on December 8, 1971.

1971: California's  first traffic management center was established in Los Angeles. The “42-mile Surveillance Loop’  included the Santa Monica, San Diego, and Harbor Freeways. This   milestone in the development of a fully-automated traffic management system  included elements such as underground "loop detectors" and ramp metering. The passage of the Transportation Development Act extended the state's retail sales tax to include gasoline, and provided for a portion of that revenue to be returned to local government for transportation projects. This produced  new revenue for local transportation programs, especially mass transit.

1973: The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) was formed to unify all transportation functions under a single department.

1978: The California Transportation Commission was created to replace the California Highway Commission, State Transportation Board, Aeronautics Board and California Toll Bridge Authority. The new commission was charged with advising and assisting the governor and Legislature in formulating and evaluating state policies and plans for transportation programs.

1983: California’s gas tax rose to 9 cents per gallon, the first increase since 1963.

1987: Caltrans established its 12^th and final district in Orange County.

1989: Striking on Oct. 17, 1989, the massive Loma Prieta Earthquake raised public awareness of the need to strengthen and retrofit state highway bridges. According to a report for the Task Force on the Seismic Design of Bridges, the collapse of Cypress Viaduct and the damage to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge proved  the need for more rigorous seismic specifications. The report's authors believe the  temblor also illustrated the importance of viable highway bridges to the national economy. The department took just one month to return the San Francisco-Oakland span to service. Following  Loma Prieta, Caltrans increased its funding  for seismic bridge research by more than twenty-fold, the according to the task force report. Further, the authors write, large-scale bridge components were tested under static and dynamic loads to study and improve their seismic performance.

Caltrans initially identified 1,039 state highway bridges, mostly single-column structures,  in need of retrofit to meet contemporary seismic safety standards. That project, funded by state gas taxes, was completed in May 2000 at a cost of $1.082 billion. 

1989 also saw the passage of the Transportation Blueprint for the 21st Century, a collection of bonds and user tax increases, to bring in $18.5 billion in additional transportation funding  to state and local transportation agencies over the next decade. Its passage was driven by public concerns over growing traffic congestion and was given added impetus by the Loma Prieta Earthquak. The plan included a proposal for the creation of an Interregional Road System, comprising 3,300 miles of the most important state freeway and highway routes. The $3 billion Interregional Road System plan was unveiled in 1990. It contemplated the eventual development to freeway or expressway standards along the 3,300-mile system, added capacity on critical trunk-line routes, and modest design upgrades on an additional 1,800 miles of “priority routes” not formally part of the interregional system.

1990: The state gas tax was increased to 14 cents per gallon, with a yearly increase of one cent per year for an additional four years. A new State Master Plan for Transportation focused on reducing traffic congestion, with an emphasis on expanding bus, rail and other public transit systems instead of adding more freeways.

1994: The state’s gas tax reached 18 cents per gallon. After the Northridge Earthquake in Los Angeles on January 17, Caltrans identified another identified another 1,155 state-owned bridges, mostly multi-column structures, needing retrofit. Funding for this $1.35 billion program came from the $2 billion bond authorized by voters with the passage of Proposition 192 in 1996.

2002: The public notification system called Amber Alert is based on an acronym for “America's Missing: Broadcasting Emergency Response. The department broadcast its  first Amber Alert on August 1 when two teenage girls were abducted near Lancaster.   Milton Walters, a Caltrans equipment operator, spotted the white Ford Bronco that the abductor was driving as Walters worked at a construction site on State Highway 178.  He reported the sighting to the California Highway Patrol, and shortly thereafter animal control officer Bonnie Hernandez also reported seeing the car driving along a dirt road toward a thickly wooded area near Inyokern. Kern county sheriff's deputies caught up with the abductor there and killed him in a shootout. The two girls in the car escaped injury.

2004: Proposition 42, the Transportation Congestion Improvement Act, was approved by voters on the November 2004 ballot to protect transportation funds. This act limited the use of transportation funds for other non-transportation related needs.

2005: Caltrans developed the Goods Movement Action Plan, aimed at  improving the flow of goods while reducing environmental impacts related to freight traffic. Additionally, the department distributed $5 million in federal funds to metropolitan planning organizations to produce regional “blueprint” planning documents designed to improve environmental quality.   

2006: The San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge Self-Anchored Suspension span contract was awarded in April, at $6.3 billion the largest public infrastructure contract in California's history.

2007: Reconstruction of the I-880 and the I-580 approaches to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was completed in just 25 days following a gasoline tanker fire that melted and partially collapsed part of the structure. The Department of Transportation, for the first time in history, oversaw $10 billion worth of construction occurring on the State Highway System.

2008: Caltrans completed the rehabilitation of a three-quarter-mile mile stretch of the I-5 in downtown Sacramento known as the “boat section.” The roadway is located below the water level of the nearby Sacramento River and was named for the work required to dry the ground when the road was  built in the 1960s. Over the years, the section flooded repeatedly as river silt and sand blocked its drainage system; ground water pushed through joints in the seals slab and rose through the pavement, causing significant cracks and deterioration of the surface. Caltrans expected repairs to take two years, but a contractor finished the job in 40 days.

2009: California received $3.64 billion form the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act  for transportation and was the first State in the nation to commit $1.5 billion to projects. These projects include a $1 billion lane widening on I-405, a $13.5 million project to resurface and repair a 50 year old section of I-80 in the Bay area and $1 billion to replace sections of Doyle Drive in San Francisco.

About Caltrans (Caltrans website)

Important Events in Caltrans History (Caltrans website)

The Interstate Highway System Turns 50 (Caltrans website)

Seismic Retrofit Program (Caltrans website)

Chronology of California Highways – Phase I (by Daniel Faigin, California Highways)

Chronology of California Highways – Phase II (by Daniel Faigin, California Highways)

Chronology of California Highways – Phase III (by Daniel Faigin, California Highways)

Chronology of California Highways – Phase IV (by Daniel Faigin, California Highways)

Chronology of California Highways – Phase V (by Daniel Faigin, California Highways)

Chronology of California Highways – Phase VI (by Daniel Faigin, California Highways)

1896 Map of Proposed State Highways

Two Earn Reward for Tips Leading to Rescue of Kidnapped Teens (by Troy Anderson, Los Angeles Daily News)

His Reputation on the Line, Contractor Finishes Repair Early, and I-580 Opens (by Michael Cabanatuan, San Francisco Chronicle)

The massive department is broken into six divisions by function.

Traffic Operations

This division is responsible for the planning, design, and analysis of highway safety and traffic operational improvements, as well as transportation management. The division also regulates any activity that may affect the flow of traffic within the highway right of way, from driveway installation to construction of landscaping and graffiti removal to commercial activities and civic events, as well as the placement of advertising displays visible from California highways. Similarly, it has authority to grant permits for the movement of vehicles and loads exceeding statutory limitations on vehicle size, weight and load. The Office of Truck Services oversees truck traffic, including designating the state's permissible trucking routes and gathering information on load weights, an important consideration when studying pavement wear. Finally, the division is responsible for collecting and disseminating traffic information, including historical volume and congestion data and real-time construction delay and traffic conditions.

Mass Transportation

The Mass Transportation Division concerns itself with funding and overseeing an array of local transit programs across California. Among its key responsibilities is the state Public Transportation Moderniza­tion, Improvement, and Service Enhancement Account Program, which voters approved as part of Proposition 1B in 2006. The program pays for rehabilitation projects in public transportation services, as well as safety or modernization improvements, capital service enhancements or expansions, new capital projects, bus rapid transit improvements, or for repairing or replacing public transit trolling stock.

According to a Caltrans report, the transportation division has allocated $849 million in program funds to date. In cases where a local government agency has met its public transportation obligations, it may be allowed to use Caltrans transit subsidies for street and road improvements. To evaluate such waivers, the Mass Transportation Division has established its Transportation Development Act branch. The division also is responsible for the State Transit Programs, which support state, local and regional public transportation agencies by administering transit, ferry and rail projects. To encourage the inclusion of mass transit in planning for transportation projects, and to promote compact, mixed-use development near public transportation, the division has established its Statewide Transit Planning branch.  In addition, the division strongly supports bus rapid transit. Such services run on dedicated routes that are closed to other vehicular traffic, using buses instead of subway or light rail cars. They do not entail the expense and comparatively inflexible planning process that goes with laying track.  The division's Bus Rapid Transit Program  promotes this option. In addition to all these state programs, Mass Transportation also runs a number of federal programs, including Urbanized Area Formula Grants, the Elderly and Disabled Specialized Transit Program, Interagency Coordination, a funding program for rural and and small transit agencies,   Procurement and Grants Management and Transit Safety and Security. To coordinate these varied responsibilities, the division has set up the Transit Systems Analysis Branch and the Transit Integration Branch.

Transportation Planning

The Division of Transportation Planning sets forth the long-term vision for California's transportation system and implements statewide transportation policy in collaboration with state, regional and local governmental agencies. One of the division's primary responsibilities is the California Transportation Plan, which addresses the state's transportation needs 20 years into the future and beyond. It is revised every five years. The current California Transportation Plan, CTP 2025, was approved in 2006 and revised in October 2007 to meet new federal planning requirements.

Transportation Planning oversees Caltrans' Economic Analysis Branch, which performs economic research and modeling and cost/benefit analysis.

The Office of Interagency Planning works with Caltrans' 12 district offices to monitor and make recommendations regarding regional transportation planning, as well as relevant state and federal legislation. Its publications include a reference manual for regional transportation plans and their funding sources.

Also under Transportation Planning is the Freight Planning Branch. This office studies freight transportation system performance and recommends improvements. Its responsibilities  include the Goods Movement Action Plan and the State Rail Plan.

The System Planning Branch identifies current and future deficiencies in the state highway system and recommends improvements to meet mobility goals. 

The Office of Projects / Plans Coordination is charged with identifying funding for projects.

Aeronautics

The Division of Aeronautics issues permits for hospital heliports and public-use airports, and inspects them annually. It also makes recommendations regarding proposed school sites within two miles of an airport runway and authorizes helicopter landing sites at or near schools.  The Aeronautics Division also addresses integration of aviation into transportation system planning on a regional, statewide and national basis. It administers noise regulation and land use planning laws that foster compatible land use around airports; the division also encourages environmental mitigation measures to lessen noise, air pollution and other impacts caused by aviation. Finally, the Division of Aeronautics provides grants and loans for safety, maintenance and capital improvement projects at airports.

Division of Equipment

The Division of Equipment buys or makes, services and repairs Caltrans' fleet of approximately 13,000 pieces of equipment. The division has about 400 employees assigned to service and repair facilities throughout the state.

Administration

Caltrans has 12 districts, each with a regional administrative staff. Orange County has its own district, but the other districts all cover at least two counties.

As of 2011-12, Caltrans drew $4.8 billion from a federal trust fund to support transportation programs. It gets another $3.6 billion from the state's Transportation Fund. Nearly a score of state and federal funding sources make up the balance of Caltrans' $13.9 billion budget.

By far the largest share of that money is allocated to Highway Transportation. Of this $11.6 billion share, more than half pays for state capital outlay projects, while some $2.1 billion subsidizes construction by local government agencies. Maintenance programs, which also fall under Highway Transportation, get $1.5 billion. Some 17,205 people work in some division of this largest sector in the department—84% of Caltrans' workforce.

The last of the department's major commitments is mass transit. Caltrans is responsible for the administration of intercity rail service in California, including capital projects and rail car management, management of state and federal capital and operations grant programs, and the planning, support and coordination of mass transportation services. For these purposes, the department sets aside about $1.2 billion.

In each of the last five years, Caltrans has overseen contracts valued at more than $9 billion. At the end of the 2009-10 fiscal year, the department had nearly 700 ongoing construction contracts valued at nearly $9.6 billion statewide.

The largest such contract currently underway is the $1.43 billion award to American Bridges/Fluor Enterprises to build the self-anchored suspension portion of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

The department posts project information online, including recently advertised contracts, winning bids and construction documents.

According to Caltrans, its largest contracts are generally awarded for construction. The Top 10 monetary contracts awarded by the department in 2012 were:

According to data obtained from the State Contract & Procurement Registration System (eSCPRS) online database, the Top 10 service contacts awarded by Caltrans in 2012 were:

Largest Construction Contract Awarded in the State (California Transportation Journal)

Contractor Information (CalTrans website)

3-Year Budget (pdf)

San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge

Replacing the east span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge has been controversial from the start.

The project started after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake smashed a 50-foot section of the structure. The new self-anchored suspension bridge was meant to link San Francisco and Oakland with a roadway capable of riding out a major temblor and remaining operational afterward. Criticisms have ranged from aesthetics to the project's $6.3 billion cost. There's also an ongoing dispute concerning the bridge's safety.

Whereas traditional suspension structures like the Golden-Gate Bridge are held in place by huge weights buried in the ground, the main cables in a self-anchored span attach to the ends of the bridge deck. UC Berkeley engineering professor Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl says such structures subject the ends of a bridge to a great deal of pressure and are inherently unstable. He's argued that the stress could make the bridge vulnerable to a major earthquake.

Stresses far short of such a catastrophe have hit the existing span with structural problems. On September 5, 2009, as Caltrans prepared to replace a section of the bridge, an inspection turned up a crack in a steel column called an eyebar. Repair crews reinforced it in time for the bridge to reopen two days later, the day after Labor Day. But on October 27, some 5,000 pounds of steel tumbled into rush hour traffic on the upper deck of the bridge as part of the eyebar repair snapped. The steel fragments damaged three cars, but no one was injured. Caltrans officials announced that the repair failed because the agency's engineers had not accounted for the effect high winds and road vibrations would have on their patch. That admission prompted state legislators to question Caltrans' competence to oversee the project. It took the transit agency until December to devise and install dependable reinforcements.

The Oakland-San Francisco project also has drawn criticism for the length of time it's taken to complete. The original structure took just three and a half years to build. But retrofitting efforts after the 1989 quake had proceeded for nearly seven years before officials concluded it would be safer and more cost-effective to build a new span. Then local officials started wrangling over the design, with San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown also trying to have the bridge rerouted. Governor Gray Davis finally put a stop to the infighting in 2000. The new self-sustaining structure is due to be complete in 2013.

Self-Anchored Suspension Span (Bay Bridge Seismic Safety Products)

Bay Bridge is a Shaky Proposition (by Debra J. Saunders, San Francisco Chronicle)

A Bridge Suspended in Controversy (by Amit Asaravala, Wired)

New Black Eye for Recently Improved Caltrans (by Michael Cabanatuan, San Francisco Chronicle)

Bay Bridge Remains Closed After Steel Rods Break During Wind (by Maura Dolan, Los Angeles Times)

Sturdier Fix Found for Crack in Bay Bridge (by Michael Cabanatuan, San Francisco Chronicle)

710 Freeway Extension

The fight over whether to link the 710 Freeway to Interstate 210 has been going on for more than half a century. Currently, route 710 peters out into neighborhood streets just short of South Pasadena. That city has led the opposition to a freeway extension because the route, as originally proposed, would have cut South Pasadena in two and required the removal of some 1,000 homes. 

In 1973, South Pasadena won a court injunction under the state Environmental Quality Act and the National Environmental Protection Act, prohibiting Caltrans from building the extension until an environmental impact report was complete.  The agency submitted four EIRs between 1973 and 1992, but the Federal Highways Administration rejected each one. The injunction remained in place until 1998, when the Highways Administration accepted a supplemental EIR and agreed to fund a large portion of the project. In response, South Pasadena filed a federal lawsuit claiming the freeway builders had not planned adequately to protect clean air, the environment and historic properties. A judge granted an injunction in 1999. In 2003 the Highways Administration rescinded its approval, and a year later, the state Transportation Commission withdrew its plans. Caltrans now is considering a subterranean route to complete the roadway.

South Pasadena’s Historic Opposition to a Surface Extension  (City of South Pasadena Online History)

Caltrans Renews Study of 710 Freeway Tunnel (by Jean Merl, Los Angeles Times)

Carpool Lane Congestion

California's carpool lanes, meant to speed the flow of traffic, have grown steadily more congested themselves. In 2007, a Caltrans study found that in nearly one-third of the state's carpool lanes, traffic speeds during evening rush hour fell short of federal minimum carpool standards, which required speeds of at least 45 mph.

One of the most controversial solutions, taking effect in July 2011, was to evict hybrid cars from high occupancy vehicle lanes. In Los Angeles County, center of some of the worst congestion, hybrids made up about 6% of all traffic in the carpool lanes. Officials reasoned that, since traffic snarls build exponentially, removing even that percentage would ease backups in carpool lanes.

Barring the hybrids may not end the crowding, because another generation of comparatively green vehicles could soon be clogging high occupancy lanes once again. As many as 40,000 new-generation clean-running vehicles—primarily plug-in hybrids—will get carpool stickers under a new program beginning in 2012. Fully electric cars and vehicles that run on compressed natural gas also keep their access to the carpool lane.

Now officials in Los Angeles county plan to crack down harder, converting 25 miles of high occupancy lanes on the 10 and 110 freeways into toll lanes. Carpool motorists and buses will be able to use the lanes free of charge, but all solo drivers, including people driving alternative-fuel vehicles, will have to pay up tolls during peak rush-hour traffic.

During a one-year trial period, the cost will vary from 25 cents to $1.40 a mile, depending on traffic. If the speed of traffic drops below 45 mph for more than 10 minutes, the carpool lanes will be closed to all solo motorists until speeds increase.

Solo Drivers of Low-Emission Autos Fume Over Fees to Use Carpool Lanes (by Jerry Hirsch, Los Angeles Times)

For Hybrid Drivers, It's Now the Past Lane (by Abby Sewell, Kate Mather and Ari Bloomekatz, Los Angeles Times)

Caltrans Seeks Ways to Unclog Its Overflowing Carpool Lanes (by Rong-Gong Lin II and Sharon Bernstein, Los Angeles Times)

Adopt-A-Highway

A lot of Caltrans initiatives, even the seemingly innocuous Adopt-A-Highway program in which sponsors get credit on discreet roadside signs for helping to defray maintenance costs, seem to generate a high degree of  rancor.

In June 2008, the transit agency abruptly suspended Adopt-A-Highway after the Minutemen of San Diego, an anti-illegal immigration group, sued alleging discrimination and free speech violations after it was forced to move its stretch of highway farther from a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint along Interstate 5 in San Diego County. The transit agency argued the sign could attract protests and pose a public safety risk adjacent the highway, but a federal judge disagreed and the sign was restored to its original location a month later.

Not all the excitement has been so politically fraught. In April 2010, some Marin County motorists took exception to Caltrans' Enhanced Landscape Demonstration Program, a two-year project modeled on Adopt-A-Highway. Under the project, Toyota planted roadside flowerbeds as part of its commitment to maintain at least three acres of highway landscaping at each of 11 sites. Some of the designs were innocuous, such as a rainbow on a stretch of Interstate 110 south of Pasadena. But in Marin County, the Toyota site featured the flowering outline of a Prius—an artistic venture that drew outraged responses from local commuters.  Advertising billboards have been banned in the county since the 1970s.

Highway Program Suspended (by Susannah Rosenblatt, Los Angeles Times)

Enhanced Landscape Planting (ELP) Demonstration Program (Caltrans website)

Ever Wonder About Those Flowers Along 101? (Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

20,000 Flowers, A Car Maker, and a Road Caretaker Save the State Thousands of Dollars (by Patrick Chandler, Caltrans’ Inside Seven newsletter)

"Billboard-Gate" Heats Up (More Marin)

Bike Lanes

Before a local government can install a bike lane or “share the road” signs, it must get permission from the California Traffic Control Devices Committee, which sets design standards for all signs, signals and pavement markings for California’s urban streets.

But the committee—chaired by a manager of the Automobile Club of Southern California—includes no representatives for bicyclists, pedestrians or transit users.  Critics say that, receptive only to the views of motorists, the committee has resisted requests by local agencies to experiment with innovative bicycle facilities. According to the California Bicycle Coalition, the committee has sometimes been misinformed about basic state law governing bicycling and knows little about how bicyclists operate on the road or innovations in bicycle facility design.

Assembly Bill 345, introduced in February 2011, would have required Caltrans to add representatives from non-motorized interest groups to the committee. But in September, the agency announced plans to make the suggested change administratively.

Reforming the Caltrans Advisory Process (California Bicycle Coalition)

Proposed Process to Appoint New Members to the California Traffic Devices Control Committee (California Bicycle Coalition) (pdf)

Toll Roads

The state of California embarked upon an experimental journey in 1989 when it approved four pilot projects to demonstrate the feasibility of privately owned and operated highways. For drivers, it’s pay as you go. The legislation empowered Caltrans to enter into agreements with private entities for development, construction and operation of the projects.

SR 91 in Orange County is a 10-mile, four-lane project running down the median of the already-existing SR 55. It opened in 1995, is fully automated and uses variable congestion pricing.  After four years of operation, the company sued the county over a noncompete clause when the county tried to expand its number of free lanes. A political uproar ensued and the company sold the toll road to the county.

The long-delayed SR 125 in San Diego County opened in 2007 and is also 10 miles long and four lanes wide.

The 4-lane, 11.2-mile SR 57 in Orange County was supposed to run through the Santa Ana River Flood Control Channel right-of-way, with construction beginning in 2001. The developers asked for an extension until 2007, which was denied, and the project died in 2003.

The Mid-State Tollway was going to be a 4-lane, 40-plus-mile route through Contra Costa and Alameda counties, but it encountered serious political opposition and was terminated in 2001.

More projects are under consideration.

Good idea or a bad trip?

From the Right—Good Idea

Right now, the trend in toll roads is toward managed lane projects within existing roads rather than construction of new roads or total conversion of old ones. But either way, supporters say private enterprise does it better than government and the consumer is the ultimate beneficiary.

Toll roads will offer incentives for drivers to determine the most efficient way for them to get around. Urban planners will have another tool to manage the clogged arteries that impede growth and development. Proper management of the roads could lessen air pollution, increase safety, enhance the driving experience and even have a positive effect on development of mass transit.

Inclusion of private enterprise in the planning, development and operation of the roads could bring new sources of expertise into the transportation field while providing jobs and encouraging new modes of financing. Subsidies and inventive pricing could reduce the burden on low-income drivers. And toll roads offer a funding alternative to regressive taxes. 

The Little Hoover Commission, in its 2010 report on rebuilding the states infrastructure, singled out the toll road pilot project as an example of when “California once was a pioneer in this more innovative public-private partnership arena.” The commission’s conclusion was that California could not rebuild its infrastructure as it had in the past. It decried the use of more general obligation bonds and said the future lies with public-private partnerships that utilize user fees.

Future for California Tollways Looks HOT (by Rich Saskal, The Bond Buyer)

Toll Road Fact Sheet (Caltrans website)

Caltrans Chief Faces Panel, Defends Toll Road Deals (by Megan Garvey and Meg James, Los Angeles Times)

The Orange County Toll Roads: Largely Successful (by Robert W. Poole, Jr., The Reason Foundation) (pdf)

Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Toll Roads for California Testimony of Robert W. Poole, Jr. (Little Hoover Commission) (pdf)

Building California: Infrastructure Choices and Strategy (Little Hoover Commission) (pdf)

From the Left—Bad Trip

It might be great for drivers who have enough money to pay the tolls. They would have quicker commute times and perhaps safer drives. But what does that mean for everyone else. If the traffic on public highways isn’t denser, it may be partly because the drivers forced to take those roads find them intolerable.

This country was founded on a principle of shared public resources that’s been around at least since the Middle Ages. Public lands, water, energy. The “Commons” are an essential element of a thriving civil society. Outgrowths of that principle are the common resources we develop and share as a society. Educational institutions, libraries, parks, healthcare, transportation, housing, etc.

The freedom to travel has long been recognized as a fundamental right and transportation equity is a significant component of that. Price structures like tolls can significantly affect financial burdens, which tend to fall disproportionately on the poor. 

Toll roads will introduce a market incentive that won’t necessarily benefit consumers. Orange County encountered a situation where competition between a toll road and a public road resulted in a noncompete agreement from the state. Enhancements to the state road, like repairs, were considered unfair competition and led to a court battle. The Orange County Transportation Authority ended up buying the toll road back from the private company.

That market incentive also leads to abuses. A class-action suit against toll road agencies in 2009 resulted in a $42 million settlement for drivers who say they were charged excessive penalties for alleged toll violations. The suit was filed on behalf of a woman who had unknowingly run up $32 in unpaid tolls on the 91 Express Lane in Orange County. Three years later, she received a letter demanding payment of $2,700 in penalties.  

Pamela Mathews Avery of Riverside County, who allegedly ran up $346 in unpaid tolls, got a bill for $47,850 in penalties. Ruth Arlene Murray, 72, of San Bernardino County was told to ante up $70,000 for not paying $504 in fines.

Supporters of mass transit fear that a shift to toll roads will reduce the incentive to develop alternatives to inefficient single-driver transportation. By removing fundamental transportation planning decisions from government, decisions that  might have benefited the community as a whole will more likely fall by the wayside.

The Global Commons—Our Shared Resources (Share the World’s Resources)

Evaluating Transportation Equity (by Todd Litman, Victoria Transport Policy Institute) (pdf)

Citizens Against State Highway to Toll Road Abuse and Proliferation

Citizens Against Toll Roads

Citizens Against Road Ripoffs

The 91 Express Lanes – Public or Private? (by Michael Melo, Orange County Register)

Toll Roads Agree to $42-Million Settlement Over Penalties (by Andrew Galvin, Orange County Register)

Fines for Express Lane Violations Take Their Toll (by Dan Weikel, Los Angeles Times)

Break up Caltrans?

If you build it, they will come. Unfortunately, that Field of Dreams baseball bromide is too true of Caltrans. After decades of hugely expensive public works projects, California roads are overcrowded and in disrepair. 

Is Caltrans at fault?

Yes

In March 2011, Republican state Senator Joel Anderson issued a public appeal to greatly reduce Caltrans' size or even dissolve it altogether.

Anderson cited a study by the non-partisan Legislative Analyst Office that found overstaffing, high costs and weak management at the transit agency, and also noted a survey by the libertarian Reason Foundation that ranked Caltrans 48^th among state transit agencies nationwide.  The senator called doing away with such an agency an important deficit-cutting step to help resolve California's budget woes.

In April 2011, the state auditor recommended that Caltrans strengthen budgeting practices, refine its performance measures and improve internal controls in the department's Capital Outlay Support Program. Among the auditor's findings:

·  “62 percent of the projects that completed construction in fiscal years 2007-08 through 2009-10 had support costs that exceeded their respective budgets. These overruns totaled more than $305 million.”

·  “Caltrans has not ensured that its systems effectively and accurately track projects' total budgets.”

·   “Caltrans' use of inconsistent methods to derive the support-to-capital ratio over the years has likely hindered any meaningful analysis of the support program's performance.”

·   “Caltrans limits the ability of the public to easily assess a project's adherence to its budgeted support costs.”

The senator claims the transportation department pays its employees too much. In March 2011, he said that he has a plan to take nearly $13 billion from Caltrans, shifting that money to cities and counties for local highways, roads and bridges. Doing that,  Anderson claims, would save $2 billion a year.

2011 Budget: Transportation (Legislative Analyst’s Office)

2011 Report on California Department of Transportation (State Auditor)

19th Annual Highway Report (by David T. Hartgen, Adrian Moore, Ravi K. Karanam and M. Gregory Fields, Reason Foundation)

Senate Bill 851 (pdf)

Caltrans’ Failings Amount to Highway Robbery (by Senator Joel Anderson, San Diego Union-Tribune op-ed)

Caltrans Needs to Get Back on Road to Respect (by Shirley Grindle, Los Angeles Times op-ed)

We Can Put A Man On The Moon But We Can't Fix CALTRANS???!!! (by Senator Joel Anderson, Flash Report)

Cutting Out Caltrans (by Mike Luery, CBS)

No

California’s population continues to grow at an aggressive rate. People want to live outside of the urban areas they work, and they drive everywhere alone in their cars. Mass transit is scorned, infrastructure maintenance would require new taxes no one wants to pass, and people have little understanding of, much less respect for, the elaborate transit system they already have.

What Californians apparently do have is an abundant appetite for scapegoating public servants.

Is there waste at Caltrans? There has never been a public or private entity with a multibillion dollar budget in history that didn’t suffer from a measure of waste and mismanagement. Are reforms in order? Always. Government is an organic body that constantly evolves to serve the needs of its citizens in an ever-changing environment.

But Senator Anderson didn’t propose reform. “It is time for a new approach, and we’re not just talking reform – we’re talking revolution,” Anderson said in a newspaper op-ed. His solution for saving billions of dollars: eliminate Caltrans, because it isn’t doing anything anyway. He would shift management of Caltrans projects to local entities and leave it to them to outsource the engineering and their other technical aspects to private contractors.

Caltrans is, of course, not doing nothing. It is currently administering one of the largest construction programs in its history with $10 billion in active projects underway. It is doing so with its lowest staffing levels since 2004. The Professional Engineers in California Government, a group that represents 13,000 state engineers, notes that in the four preceding years, Caltrans delivered 1,391 of 1,394 projects on schedule.

While it is a common conservative trope that private enterprise does everything cheaper than government, the opposite is more likely true and demonstratably false in the case of engineering outsourcing. Citing statistics from the Department of Finance, the engineering group says that while the average Caltrans engineer earns $113,000 a year, comparable engineers in the private sector earn twice that much.

Anderson would initially shift responsibility for transportation projects to the counties and lower community levels. While many of the local government entities chafe at having to deal with Caltrans on myriad matters large and small, they are also acutely aware of the precariousness of relying on state funding for projects, mandated or otherwise.

“Good government” supports say that eviscerating Caltrans is an idea that appeals mostly to people who think government should be shrunk to a size small enough to drown in a bathtub, regardless of the merits. True reformers want to make the trains run on time, not blow them up in a crowded station.

Senate Bill 851 – Short on Solutions and Substance (Professional Engineers in California Government) (pdf)

Just the Facts: Salary Figure Doesn't Tell Whole Story at Caltrans (by Jon Ortiz, Sacramento Bee)

PECG Objectives 2011 (pdf)

Cindy McKim, 2010 – 2011  

Randy Iwasaki, 2009 - 2010

Will Kempton, 2004 – 2009

Jeff Morales, 2000-2004. Morales was one of the first Caltrans directors to focus on mass transit issues rather than just road building and maintenance. The former Chicago Transit Authority official championed bus and rail projects in the Los Angeles region before resigning. His tenure was marked by an economic downturn that resulted in Caltrans budget cuts.  

Jose Medina, 1999-2000. Medina resigned after a short, tumultuous stint as director. The former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors had little background in transportation when tapped for the job by Governor Gray Davis. Much of the criticism had to do with the handling of state contracts, most notably the transfer of a failing, privately-owned toll road to a nonprofit corporation financed by state bonds.  

James W. Van Loben Sels, 1991-1999

Robert K. Best, 1988-1991

Leo J. Trombatore, 1983-1987

Adriana Gianturco, 1976-1983

Howard C. Ullrich, 1974-1975

James A. Moe, 1968-1973. (Includes tenure running the department when it was a division of Department of Public Works.)