By Charly SHELTON

In 2017, SB 1, or the Road Repair and Accountability Act, was passed in the California State Legislature. This is a tax on gasoline sales that is supposed to funnel funds directly to improving the roadways in California. The voter-approved gas tax went up again on July 1 and, although drivers may not really feel a punch to the wallet, the small raise of 6 cents adds up by the gallon and can make a huge difference to the state.

“The money being raised from the gas tax was part of SB 1 that was passed in 2017 and it is designed to invest dollars in road repairs and combating congestion. Over a 10-year period, it’s estimated it’ll put an additional $55 billion into state and local transportation systems for those kinds of upgrades and investments,” said Jeff Burdick, Caltrans Public Information Officer.

The funds are earmarked to repair the roadways and freeways that see millions of drivers a day cruising across these sections of blacktop. Though traffic is an issue and potholes are jarring and any issue can seem like the worst one when encountered behind the wheel, some issues are actually more pressing than others and need to be fixed for safety’s sake before moving onto projects to ease travel.

“The State Transportation System does have a Fix-It First philosophy, so a lot of the dollars just go into regular maintenance work on our system – the repaving of our roads, working on upgrades and maintenance to our bridges, our culverts, and then also technology for transportation management systems such as the metering people see when they get onto our freeways during high congestion periods,” Burdick said.

Locally, the SB 1 dollars have been put toward improving the crush of traffic in some key areas. In partnership with the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, multiple projects along the 5 corridor are working to open new carpool lanes from the 134 to the 118 by 2020, and along the 5 from the Los Angeles/Orange County line to the 605 by late 2021. But this is just a small portion of what the funds have done statewide.

“So far through SB 1 statewide, Caltrans has already completed 102 projects. This included 57 pavement projects. Caltrans has repaired or replaced almost 1,500 lane miles,” Burdick said. “Also, as part of these 102 projects, we’ve completed 14 bridge projects. Now the bridge projects include multiple bridges oftentimes and so that’s improved or replaced 115 bridges so far. And the remaining completed projects involve upgrades to widen roads and make them safer with our new striping that we use that is a wider but brighter striping and makes it more noticeable in low visibility situations.”

  Charly Shelton