Roads
I have been staving off an attack of soap box diatribes for a while now, but no more! This entry will be entirely pointless and even more useless, but I feel a need to vent. So here goes:
What is up with the roads? I live in the Inland Empire region of Southern California and I think that we probably have the worst roads of any major third world country. I am sure that my recent anger towards the pavement stems from sudden increase in driving brought on by a new relationship that sees me rolling along some 200 miles a week. No matter the reason for the sudden upswell in anger, the true culprit is the absolute lack of quality in our roads.
Take for instance Ramona Expressway, this road was recently changed from a 2 lane death trap to a 4 lane divided highway for about 4 miles fronting a new development. While this sounds good in theory, the actual result is terrible. The original two-way road surface was used for the west-bound lanes. This was absolutely moronic! You cannot reverse the direction of traffic flow on a road without seeing an enormous increase in cracking, checking and monstrous potholes. The pavement stretches with the flow of traffic (not much, but millimeters add up eventually), when the flow is reversed, the pavement is pushed back to where it started, but it literally begins to tear apart. Why in the world would an engineer ever allow this to happen? Why? Well, after the road began to literally fall apart, the city of Perris had to pay to have it fixed, so the tore up the lane that was messed up and re-paved it. This has got to be the absolute worst paving job I have ever seen. The pavement isn’t even close to being smooth. There are so many bumps that I think the potholes may have been better! I would like to know the name of the inspector that signed that shoddy workmanship off. I don’t know what I would do with the name, but I would like to know it at least. Perhaps I could curse him every time I drove down that road.
Don’t even get me started on the freeways in SoCal, I don’t understand how the worlds largest and most complex freeway system (I am assuming) can be so poorly constructed. Perhaps it is the age of the road surface that is to blame, but I don’t care. California residents pay more in taxes on their gasoline than any other state (I am basing that on the sheer population of the state), that being said, we should have the nicest roads! Period. I have driven through states that can’t possibly match the dollar per highway mile that California residents pay, but their roads are immaculate. We Calfornian’s need to rally together and demand that we get our fair share of the Federal government’s monetary appropriation for highways each year.
Ok, so I think will do for now… Stay tuned for more exciting complaining from me in the near future!
