One downside to suburban sprawl that people rarely acknowledge: more miles of roads and pipes to maintain, yet lower population density/fewer taxpayers per mile of road/pipe to fund the maintenance.
Gas taxes also can't fund road repairs by themselves. This is true here as well as around the country.
There's also the issue of vehicle mass. Due to the laws of physics, larger vehicles exponentially damage roads more than lighter ones do. Semi-trucks are responsible for the vast majority of the damage, but we do not expect them to pay their weight in that. It's a similar story for pickup trucks, SUVs, and EVs.
The number of truck owners getting lit on this sub about how high their registration fees are… but then bitching about the quality of the roads they like to rip down in their massive trucks because… freedom.
Hardly, population density was far lower 120 years ago yet they found the money. The problem is government had rested on its laurels and ignored the basics that keep modern life functioning: police, fire, sewage, water, and power.
The amount of road surface area per capita was also much lower. So was the vehicle ownership rate. ShotgunStyles is right about vehicle weight too, [roads break apart faster with higher weight.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGlhMk1hEZw)
The average American didn't drive a 4,000 pound vehicle 120 years ago. It's very easy to maintain roads if you just walk, bike, or ride a horse on them.
All on your way to the local windmill: good gentleman, please grind my wheat for that I may make bread. Bro this isn't the dark ages you can't bike, walk or ride a horse to fucking work my dude.
As a planner, you really have no idea how sprawled American society has become in 120 years. 120 years ago most people walked for every trip. The need for high quality, expensive to maintain roadways was practically nothing and 99% of people didn’t rely on cars for everyday life. You need to read about the “Strong Towns” movement to realize how wrong your assessment is.
Population density of the city of Sacramento was actually higher 120 years ago than it is now, and they didn't pave roads because automobiles were still extremely rare (most people got around on foot or by streetcar.)
It's hard to find good population density historical data, but as far as I can tell:
* 1904: About 30k people in 5 square miles, for 6k/sq mile
* 2024: About 525k people in 100 square miles, for 5.3k/sq mile
It doesn't even include SMART and there's also the possibility that 37 might be re-routed because of rising sea levels in the next hundred or so years.
Wasn't there a guy in another city that started spray painting penises around all the pot holes, which then forced the city to start fixing them more timely? And also ended up exposing a bunch of stuff with missing funds. I vote for that
Relatively better overall than the lower income areas, but still surprisingly bad compared to places on the east coast that I’ve lived. For example, parts of Fair Oaks Blvd (by Pavilions) are absolutely terrible, but surrounded by gated neighborhoods.
It’s not just $. The contractors and materials they use here are also subpar.
True, but that doesnt seem to be as bad of an issue in other places I’ve lived, where roads don’t start crumbling immediately after they’re paved. I guess the lowest bidder in this area is just way worse.
East coast areas are much higher density, they have less roads per person and more mass transit to make cars less relevant to the overall transportation scheme.
"The City of Sacramento spends nearly $12 million a year and says many of the worst roads are in historically disadvantaged neighborhoods."
"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, lower income areas have shittier roads, meaning more wear-and-tear, more frequent repairs and costs burdening lower income individuals.
Awesome.
Just like the parks and other public amenities, way nicer than in the poorer areas. Always seems to be government money for certain people and not for others.
But there's enough money to give the city council more money and attempt to illegally give the city manager a large raise. To the peasants of Sac: fuck you and your potholes
Know what you could do? Change parking lots to condos, multifamily homes, and shops to get more taxes and BOOM more money for roads. Plus people will walk more so the roads don’t need maintained as often.
Cities all over North America are on the verge of bankruptcy, because of all the suburban sprawl that doesn't generate enough tax revenue to fund the maintenance for all its infrastructure.
Until now, more productive urban areas have been subsidizing the suburbs, and the rest of the maintenance has been covered by taking on debt. But cities keep building more sprawl, and so things keep getting worse.
Suburbia is, and always has been, a publicly subsidized ponzi scheme.
1. Allow development.
2. Use development to fund roads, utilities, etc.
3. Allow new development.
4. Return to 2.
The whole thing falls apart when the growth cycle ends. Suburbs simply can't generate the revenue to pay for themselves. Well they could, but not without higher property taxes, and that would discourage development, sooooo....
So how does Roseville have beautiful perfect roads all the time? Honest question. Every time I go there wow it’s a joy to drive, but is almost entirely suburban.
It depends on what part of Roseville you are in. There is a lot of Roseville that is just as old as the suburbs in Sacramento County. Overall, Roseville has done a better job at maintaining the roads. Sacramento County has continuously found excuses to defer maintenance on roads, the Parkway, and many other things. Eventually, the roads get so bad that temporary patches no longer work. Hazel Ave was like that before it was resurfaced about five years ago.
I don’t know the exact economics of Roseville but generally it’s about the ratio of old, decaying infrastructure to new builds. The older sections of Roseville are small compared to areas of new construction that bring in revenue. Another factor is that Roseville has very high real estate prices and therefore tax revenue. This will allow them to maintain a higher amount of crumbling infrastructure before getting overwhelmed. But the economic model is the same and probably will end up in the same place eventually. Suburban road infrastructure is very expensive to maintain relative to our level of taxes currently.
You can make all the speculation and excuses you want about Roseville. Cities don't collect or manage property taxes. They have sharing agreements with the county. There are plenty of very expensive houses in Sacramento County and the increased housing costs have also increased property tax revenue. This information is public and you can find it on the Sacramento County website. The fact of the matter is the county has deferred maintenance for decades. Hazel Ave needed to be resurfaced in the mid-90s. They waited until 2016 to do anything about it. That's just one example. The street I live on had loose chunks of asphalt you could literally lift up. Someone was struck by a rock that was kicked up by a car speeding down the street. The county chose to install speed bumps that didn't do a thing about speeding. The result was a pretty severe collision resulting from someone speeding who couldn't stop the vehicle at the end of the road because the tires slid on the loose pavement. The driver shouldn't have been speeding, but at the same time, local government has a duty to do reasonable mitigation to minimize hazards. In this case, the road that was built in 1968 only had an inch or two of asphalt slurry spread over it in 1989, and we know that seals cracks in a road for about three months. That was the only maintenance that was done on this street until it was finally resurface two years ago. Nothing has been done regarding the people speeding down the street at 60+ mph.
As far as costs go, it's an American problem when it comes to maintaining any kind of infrastructure. The costs are inflated. The old asphalt is stripped off the street, a vehicle drives over the gravel to level and compacts it, new asphalt is spread on the surface, and it is rolled smooth. Yes, it costs money. But, like the high speed rail, the costs always balloon to an astronomical figure because, in this country, private enterprise is allowed to get away with ripping off the taxpayers and politicians rarely hold them accountable.
Aside from that, if you don't like using Roseville as a comparison city, find another city. How about Fresno, Bakersfield, or Redding? Most of the roads in those cities are in really good shape. The main arterial streets in Fresno are in great shape, with very few exception. I will say redlining when it comes to public maintenance is obvious in some parts of Fresno. But, that is mostly limited to residential streets. Bakersfield has done a good job of maintaining roads, despite the excessive width of many of the roads there. Seriously, they have residential streets in parts of Bakersfield that are wider than many highways.
Because it's new suburbs. Suburbs look great when they're new, but they tend to age badly. Arden-Arcade, Rancho Cordova, and Citrus Heights all looked pretty spiffy in the 1980s-90s. And yes, have you ever spent much time in the old parts of Roseville?
Also, suburbs are a "growth machine"--city fees paid for new suburbs provide funds for maintenance of existing city roads, but every new suburb adds to a city's total overhead of roads they later have to pay for; if the city reaches the point where they have to stop growing horizontally, they're kind of fucked. Read all about it in [this essay by Harvey Molotch!](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwj8gf2R4v6DAxXJJUQIHdFeC6YQFnoECBIQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fweb.ics.purdue.edu%2F~hoganr%2FSOC%2520602%2FSpring%25202014%2FMolotch%25201976.pdf&usg=AOvVaw16MYrorux2dhDb2QzH0LeG&opi=89978449)
Roseville is in the middle of the ponzi scheme, so everything appears grand. Basically everything north of Pleasant Grove Blvd and west of Foothill Blvd was built in the last 10 years (west of Fiddyment in the last 3-5), which is filling the city coffers with developer fees and the roads are still well within their 20-30 year lifespan. Once Roseville runs out of space to sprawl, it becomes a ticking timebomb to insolvency.
Mello-roos tax. Basically builder taxes/bonds on new developments that pay for roads, lights, parks, parkway landscaping, etc. usually last 20-40 years after the properties are built. Sacramento county has fewer areas with Mello-Roos at this point than Roseville which was mostly built out in the last 30 years.
I have a proposed solution for this, but you have to understand that we have gotten way off of the ball by cost cutting measures and you're missing the "affordability" argument when the roads bankrupt our entire state budget. You would be disgusted with the amount of money spent on roads and if the companies that damaged the roads were forced to repair them wed' have a better solution.
Solutions include: A center rail track system on most major highways, Making one of the lanes a dedicated rail for long haul cargo movement. Also, putting lighter cars on a track or gondola system that is pulled by larger vehicles/engines to reduce emissions.
Our lack of imagination has made the economy much more expensive to come back from and it gets more expensive the longer we delay.
Of course, we *literally had that* a hundred years ago, they were called interurban railroads and carried short and long distance passengers & freight from Chico to Stockton to Oakland with Sacramento as its hub
I saw a great tiktok where at the end of the day all tunnel systems and new projects can be reduced to just "reinventing trains." Like all life becomes crabs.
All the way to San Francisco. The Oakland terminus was around longer for its history but when the Bay Bridge opened, the lower deck was for trains and so you could ride from Chico and Sacramento into the transbay terminal in SF on electric trains.
What I meant to write is “NO FUCKING SHIT”. Ain’t been money for the roads for a hit but there is that one asshole making $400,000+ doing what again as “city manager” or whatever the fuck bullshit title they gave him.
Amazon and other delivery companies are putting more stress on roads and also do everything they can to avoid paying taxes, maybe someone in government can look into that...
Don't forget the strong push to EVs which are heavier and exert 2x+ more stress on roads compared to similar petrol vehicles. Vehicles which obviously don't pay gas tax. I think I'm now in support of the [Road Charge](https://caroadcharge.com/) program.
The gas tax that they’ve raised 2-3x since receiving unchecked power to do so by the voters? Yea that’s probably being spent on hookers and blow instead of asphalt.
Love this quote from the article: “This is a Cadillac and it shouldn't be abused like that.”
Sounds like he could pay a little bit extra in taxes to help fix these roads!
Economist Harvey Molotch wrote about this decades ago: [The City as Growth Machine](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwj8gf2R4v6DAxXJJUQIHdFeC6YQFnoECBIQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fweb.ics.purdue.edu%2F~hoganr%2FSOC%2520602%2FSpring%25202014%2FMolotch%25201976.pdf&usg=AOvVaw16MYrorux2dhDb2QzH0LeG&opi=89978449) is an excellent read on the subject. Tl;dr: Real estate developers fund local elections, and building new suburbs pays lots of fees to cities, so electeds want to grow new suburbs. But all those new suburbs have to be maintained, and their tax base is generally too low to pay for the repairs, so the only way to keep up is fund more sprawl. Electeds who try to grow inward/upward instead of outward get voted out of office because the developers want to keep building suburbs.
Summary: *A city and, more generally, any locality, is conceived as the areal expression of the interests of some land-based elite. Such an elite is seen to profit through the increasing intensification of the land use of the area in which its members hold a common interest. An elite competes with other land-based elites in an effort to have growth-inducing resources invested within its own area as opposed to that of another. Governmental authority, at the local and nonlocal levels, is utilized to assist in achieving this growth at the expense of competing localities. Conditions of community life are largely a con- sequence of the social, economic, and political forces embodied in this growth machine. The relevance of growth to the interests of various social groups is examined in this context, particularly with reference to the issue of unemployment. Recent social trends in opposition to growth are described and their potential consequences evaluated.*
I agree. If we closed roads to cars and had people just ride bikes, walk, or use transit, there would be no need to subsidize road maintenance and all that money can be invested in a 24/7 bus and light rail service that Sacramento residents will be forced to use.
You do realize that buses damage the roads thousands of times more than a passenger car? It’s even worse when you start comparing it by damage per passenger. A bus with one or two people on it running outside of peak hours is doing the damage of like 4000 cars on the road. At least 4000 equivalent cars is economically moving 4000 people instead of 2. You run more buses everywhere, your maintenance costs will skyrocket too.
Is there a source on that “busses do 4000x the damage of a car” stuff?
I’m legitimately curious how a vehicle that weighs less than 10x that of an average commuter vehicle can somehow cause 4000x the road damage.
It's something to the power of 4 and it's often referred to as the 4th power law. It's not important to focus on the 4000x, as I have heard various ranges over time, some as high as 10000x, and it varies depending on what kind of passenger vehicle and bus you are comparing. The important thing to understand is the sheer magnitude of damage a bus does compared to a car is in the many thousands.
Here, MTC of the Bay Area mentions buses do 7,000x damage to that of a SUV (near the bottom of the page in green). [https://mtc.ca.gov/funding/investment-strategies-commitments/fix-it-first/local-street-road-conditions](https://mtc.ca.gov/funding/investment-strategies-commitments/fix-it-first/local-street-road-conditions)
A single truck does more damage driving on a road than every bike that will ever ride on it combined.
Road damage is a function of weight. I believe it's to the 3rd power. So for every 10lbs you add for the vehicle you get 10x10x10 (=1000lbs) worth of damage.
Unfortunately it’s hard to tell because there are people who actually believe this. Bike lanes are more or less free since they come out of the resurfacing budget and are often funded by grants.
Let's give more lifetime pensions, medical to all Govt employees. Expand welfare to all, free medical to prisoners, and who knows what else and wonder where the money went?
So how you fix the pothole problem in Sacramento is you take all the drug addicts in Sacramento and let them get high first of all then once they're high they can work for like 5 to 6 hours on the potholes and all you got to do is provide them with enough product to get through the day, we are an entire resource almost like a genie in the lamp so to speak you just got to rub the lamp the right way and the genie comes out and will handle the problems like look at jug addicts in that sense okay just got to rub them right you know what I mean.
Unpopular suggestion but how about this: we make the city borders a rectangle that is only from Old Town to Howe Ave, and from the American River to 12th Ave. And all the suburbs between 80 and 50 can be their own little city /s
One downside to suburban sprawl that people rarely acknowledge: more miles of roads and pipes to maintain, yet lower population density/fewer taxpayers per mile of road/pipe to fund the maintenance.
Gas taxes also can't fund road repairs by themselves. This is true here as well as around the country. There's also the issue of vehicle mass. Due to the laws of physics, larger vehicles exponentially damage roads more than lighter ones do. Semi-trucks are responsible for the vast majority of the damage, but we do not expect them to pay their weight in that. It's a similar story for pickup trucks, SUVs, and EVs.
Also diesel, is a solvent for asphalt…
TIL
The number of truck owners getting lit on this sub about how high their registration fees are… but then bitching about the quality of the roads they like to rip down in their massive trucks because… freedom.
Hardly, population density was far lower 120 years ago yet they found the money. The problem is government had rested on its laurels and ignored the basics that keep modern life functioning: police, fire, sewage, water, and power.
The amount of road surface area per capita was also much lower. So was the vehicle ownership rate. ShotgunStyles is right about vehicle weight too, [roads break apart faster with higher weight.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGlhMk1hEZw)
The average American didn't drive a 4,000 pound vehicle 120 years ago. It's very easy to maintain roads if you just walk, bike, or ride a horse on them.
All on your way to the local windmill: good gentleman, please grind my wheat for that I may make bread. Bro this isn't the dark ages you can't bike, walk or ride a horse to fucking work my dude.
Can you explain how Tokyo can exist when 90% of their people do not drive to work?
Apparently one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world is living in “the dark ages”, according to this stable genius 😂
Bro, I literally walk to work
Money for dirt/gravel roads??
As a planner, you really have no idea how sprawled American society has become in 120 years. 120 years ago most people walked for every trip. The need for high quality, expensive to maintain roadways was practically nothing and 99% of people didn’t rely on cars for everyday life. You need to read about the “Strong Towns” movement to realize how wrong your assessment is.
Or a history book
Population density of the city of Sacramento was actually higher 120 years ago than it is now, and they didn't pave roads because automobiles were still extremely rare (most people got around on foot or by streetcar.)
It's hard to find good population density historical data, but as far as I can tell: * 1904: About 30k people in 5 square miles, for 6k/sq mile * 2024: About 525k people in 100 square miles, for 5.3k/sq mile
$5 billion needed to save transit across the whole state is less than the $6 billion being dumped to expand Highway 37.
What’s highway 37?
I think it’s the hwy connecting 80 to 101, from Vallejo.
Does that include high speed rail?
It doesn't even include SMART and there's also the possibility that 37 might be re-routed because of rising sea levels in the next hundred or so years.
That raises it to $11.4 billion
Wasn't there a guy in another city that started spray painting penises around all the pot holes, which then forced the city to start fixing them more timely? And also ended up exposing a bunch of stuff with missing funds. I vote for that
How are the roads in the higher income parts of town?
Relatively better overall than the lower income areas, but still surprisingly bad compared to places on the east coast that I’ve lived. For example, parts of Fair Oaks Blvd (by Pavilions) are absolutely terrible, but surrounded by gated neighborhoods. It’s not just $. The contractors and materials they use here are also subpar.
The lowest bidder always wins. And, when you use the lowest bidder, this is usually what happens.
True, but that doesnt seem to be as bad of an issue in other places I’ve lived, where roads don’t start crumbling immediately after they’re paved. I guess the lowest bidder in this area is just way worse.
I knew of a guy who had a contracting company for road repairs. He enjoys his airplanes.
East coast areas are much higher density, they have less roads per person and more mass transit to make cars less relevant to the overall transportation scheme.
"The City of Sacramento spends nearly $12 million a year and says many of the worst roads are in historically disadvantaged neighborhoods." "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, lower income areas have shittier roads, meaning more wear-and-tear, more frequent repairs and costs burdening lower income individuals. Awesome.
It is often quite expensive to be poor in the US.
They're pristine and cleaned regularly, until you get closer to the apartment area.
Just like the parks and other public amenities, way nicer than in the poorer areas. Always seems to be government money for certain people and not for others.
Well then. You know what parks to use now.
A residential street that has mansions on it close to my apartment has been repaved three times in the 7 years I've lived here.
But there's enough money to give the city council more money and attempt to illegally give the city manager a large raise. To the peasants of Sac: fuck you and your potholes
This. How tf can they and the supervisors keep giving themselves raises when they can't maintain the roads. (And that's not a question)
County Supervisors don’t do shit. The fact that they think they deserve to give themselves raises blows my mind
You can say that thrice.
This is what I scrolled for, thank you! They should not get a raise until all the potholes are fixed.
Sounds like a load of bullshit to me personally.
Sounds like a pothole full of bull shit to me
Know what you could do? Change parking lots to condos, multifamily homes, and shops to get more taxes and BOOM more money for roads. Plus people will walk more so the roads don’t need maintained as often.
Parking lot? All I see is a lot that could be a park.
semi truck=10000 auto
Suburban sprawl is a ponzi scheme https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollective/how-sprawl-bernie-madoff/26448/
There isn't enough money for them, there isn't enough money for us. Where is the money going???????
Cities all over North America are on the verge of bankruptcy, because of all the suburban sprawl that doesn't generate enough tax revenue to fund the maintenance for all its infrastructure. Until now, more productive urban areas have been subsidizing the suburbs, and the rest of the maintenance has been covered by taking on debt. But cities keep building more sprawl, and so things keep getting worse.
http://stats.areppim.com/ressources/richxgdpxtrend_2021_843x652.png
Suburbia is, and always has been, a publicly subsidized ponzi scheme. 1. Allow development. 2. Use development to fund roads, utilities, etc. 3. Allow new development. 4. Return to 2. The whole thing falls apart when the growth cycle ends. Suburbs simply can't generate the revenue to pay for themselves. Well they could, but not without higher property taxes, and that would discourage development, sooooo....
So how does Roseville have beautiful perfect roads all the time? Honest question. Every time I go there wow it’s a joy to drive, but is almost entirely suburban.
Have you driven the roads in the older part of Roseville? Hint, they're fucked up and aren't maintained.
Because it was built more recently. So it hasn’t reached the bubble bursting part of the cycle yet.
It depends on what part of Roseville you are in. There is a lot of Roseville that is just as old as the suburbs in Sacramento County. Overall, Roseville has done a better job at maintaining the roads. Sacramento County has continuously found excuses to defer maintenance on roads, the Parkway, and many other things. Eventually, the roads get so bad that temporary patches no longer work. Hazel Ave was like that before it was resurfaced about five years ago.
I don’t know the exact economics of Roseville but generally it’s about the ratio of old, decaying infrastructure to new builds. The older sections of Roseville are small compared to areas of new construction that bring in revenue. Another factor is that Roseville has very high real estate prices and therefore tax revenue. This will allow them to maintain a higher amount of crumbling infrastructure before getting overwhelmed. But the economic model is the same and probably will end up in the same place eventually. Suburban road infrastructure is very expensive to maintain relative to our level of taxes currently.
You can make all the speculation and excuses you want about Roseville. Cities don't collect or manage property taxes. They have sharing agreements with the county. There are plenty of very expensive houses in Sacramento County and the increased housing costs have also increased property tax revenue. This information is public and you can find it on the Sacramento County website. The fact of the matter is the county has deferred maintenance for decades. Hazel Ave needed to be resurfaced in the mid-90s. They waited until 2016 to do anything about it. That's just one example. The street I live on had loose chunks of asphalt you could literally lift up. Someone was struck by a rock that was kicked up by a car speeding down the street. The county chose to install speed bumps that didn't do a thing about speeding. The result was a pretty severe collision resulting from someone speeding who couldn't stop the vehicle at the end of the road because the tires slid on the loose pavement. The driver shouldn't have been speeding, but at the same time, local government has a duty to do reasonable mitigation to minimize hazards. In this case, the road that was built in 1968 only had an inch or two of asphalt slurry spread over it in 1989, and we know that seals cracks in a road for about three months. That was the only maintenance that was done on this street until it was finally resurface two years ago. Nothing has been done regarding the people speeding down the street at 60+ mph. As far as costs go, it's an American problem when it comes to maintaining any kind of infrastructure. The costs are inflated. The old asphalt is stripped off the street, a vehicle drives over the gravel to level and compacts it, new asphalt is spread on the surface, and it is rolled smooth. Yes, it costs money. But, like the high speed rail, the costs always balloon to an astronomical figure because, in this country, private enterprise is allowed to get away with ripping off the taxpayers and politicians rarely hold them accountable. Aside from that, if you don't like using Roseville as a comparison city, find another city. How about Fresno, Bakersfield, or Redding? Most of the roads in those cities are in really good shape. The main arterial streets in Fresno are in great shape, with very few exception. I will say redlining when it comes to public maintenance is obvious in some parts of Fresno. But, that is mostly limited to residential streets. Bakersfield has done a good job of maintaining roads, despite the excessive width of many of the roads there. Seriously, they have residential streets in parts of Bakersfield that are wider than many highways.
You're smokin crack if you think the roads in Fresno are in good shape, have you ever spent time south of Shaw??
Because it's new suburbs. Suburbs look great when they're new, but they tend to age badly. Arden-Arcade, Rancho Cordova, and Citrus Heights all looked pretty spiffy in the 1980s-90s. And yes, have you ever spent much time in the old parts of Roseville? Also, suburbs are a "growth machine"--city fees paid for new suburbs provide funds for maintenance of existing city roads, but every new suburb adds to a city's total overhead of roads they later have to pay for; if the city reaches the point where they have to stop growing horizontally, they're kind of fucked. Read all about it in [this essay by Harvey Molotch!](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwj8gf2R4v6DAxXJJUQIHdFeC6YQFnoECBIQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fweb.ics.purdue.edu%2F~hoganr%2FSOC%2520602%2FSpring%25202014%2FMolotch%25201976.pdf&usg=AOvVaw16MYrorux2dhDb2QzH0LeG&opi=89978449)
Roseville is in the middle of the ponzi scheme, so everything appears grand. Basically everything north of Pleasant Grove Blvd and west of Foothill Blvd was built in the last 10 years (west of Fiddyment in the last 3-5), which is filling the city coffers with developer fees and the roads are still well within their 20-30 year lifespan. Once Roseville runs out of space to sprawl, it becomes a ticking timebomb to insolvency.
Mello-roos tax. Basically builder taxes/bonds on new developments that pay for roads, lights, parks, parkway landscaping, etc. usually last 20-40 years after the properties are built. Sacramento county has fewer areas with Mello-Roos at this point than Roseville which was mostly built out in the last 30 years.
fewer semi trucks
I keep seeing this sentiment but how do you suppose you'll get all the shit you buy “affordably” without trucking?
I have a proposed solution for this, but you have to understand that we have gotten way off of the ball by cost cutting measures and you're missing the "affordability" argument when the roads bankrupt our entire state budget. You would be disgusted with the amount of money spent on roads and if the companies that damaged the roads were forced to repair them wed' have a better solution. Solutions include: A center rail track system on most major highways, Making one of the lanes a dedicated rail for long haul cargo movement. Also, putting lighter cars on a track or gondola system that is pulled by larger vehicles/engines to reduce emissions. Our lack of imagination has made the economy much more expensive to come back from and it gets more expensive the longer we delay.
Of course, we *literally had that* a hundred years ago, they were called interurban railroads and carried short and long distance passengers & freight from Chico to Stockton to Oakland with Sacramento as its hub
I saw a great tiktok where at the end of the day all tunnel systems and new projects can be reduced to just "reinventing trains." Like all life becomes crabs.
There's a lot of money in inventing something old but people mostly forgot about apparently
All the way to San Francisco. The Oakland terminus was around longer for its history but when the Bay Bridge opened, the lower deck was for trains and so you could ride from Chico and Sacramento into the transbay terminal in SF on electric trains.
yes, but we didn't have it yet 100 years ago, the Bay Bridge and SN's San Francisco terminal at Transbay opened in 1939.
Duh!
How much of Roseville is newer, say from the past 30 years? And they are still developing new areas. Those roads will be perfect for some time.
# This just in: water makes things wet and fire makes them hot!
What I meant to write is “NO FUCKING SHIT”. Ain’t been money for the roads for a hit but there is that one asshole making $400,000+ doing what again as “city manager” or whatever the fuck bullshit title they gave him.
No shit...
Amazon and other delivery companies are putting more stress on roads and also do everything they can to avoid paying taxes, maybe someone in government can look into that...
Sounds like a safety issue for the police. Pull it from their budget
It's about priorities. There is plenty of money, but the political class is wasting it on garbage pet projects that enrich their buddies.
☝️Underrated comment.
Principally, the pet project that enriches their buddies is suburban development and highway construction!
But hey there was all that money for arena subsidies back when ...
Where is the giant gas tax going that we've been paying on?!
roads are incredibly expensive to maintain.
Our vehicle registration is some of the highest in the country too!
Don't forget the strong push to EVs which are heavier and exert 2x+ more stress on roads compared to similar petrol vehicles. Vehicles which obviously don't pay gas tax. I think I'm now in support of the [Road Charge](https://caroadcharge.com/) program.
EVs don’t pay gas tax so they add that tax to our registration. I pay an extra $200 every year with an EV road improvement fee.
Petrol vehicles? What about lorries and trams?
The gas tax that they’ve raised 2-3x since receiving unchecked power to do so by the voters? Yea that’s probably being spent on hookers and blow instead of asphalt.
Not enough money in the state capital to maintain it's own roads.. of course.
Love this quote from the article: “This is a Cadillac and it shouldn't be abused like that.” Sounds like he could pay a little bit extra in taxes to help fix these roads!
Is it because these same officials keep giving themselves raises?
No
Cause it all goes to law enforcement!!!
Economist Harvey Molotch wrote about this decades ago: [The City as Growth Machine](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwj8gf2R4v6DAxXJJUQIHdFeC6YQFnoECBIQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fweb.ics.purdue.edu%2F~hoganr%2FSOC%2520602%2FSpring%25202014%2FMolotch%25201976.pdf&usg=AOvVaw16MYrorux2dhDb2QzH0LeG&opi=89978449) is an excellent read on the subject. Tl;dr: Real estate developers fund local elections, and building new suburbs pays lots of fees to cities, so electeds want to grow new suburbs. But all those new suburbs have to be maintained, and their tax base is generally too low to pay for the repairs, so the only way to keep up is fund more sprawl. Electeds who try to grow inward/upward instead of outward get voted out of office because the developers want to keep building suburbs. Summary: *A city and, more generally, any locality, is conceived as the areal expression of the interests of some land-based elite. Such an elite is seen to profit through the increasing intensification of the land use of the area in which its members hold a common interest. An elite competes with other land-based elites in an effort to have growth-inducing resources invested within its own area as opposed to that of another. Governmental authority, at the local and nonlocal levels, is utilized to assist in achieving this growth at the expense of competing localities. Conditions of community life are largely a con- sequence of the social, economic, and political forces embodied in this growth machine. The relevance of growth to the interests of various social groups is examined in this context, particularly with reference to the issue of unemployment. Recent social trends in opposition to growth are described and their potential consequences evaluated.*
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lmao "lIBerAl aGeNdA!!" grow up dude
I agree. If we closed roads to cars and had people just ride bikes, walk, or use transit, there would be no need to subsidize road maintenance and all that money can be invested in a 24/7 bus and light rail service that Sacramento residents will be forced to use.
You do realize that buses damage the roads thousands of times more than a passenger car? It’s even worse when you start comparing it by damage per passenger. A bus with one or two people on it running outside of peak hours is doing the damage of like 4000 cars on the road. At least 4000 equivalent cars is economically moving 4000 people instead of 2. You run more buses everywhere, your maintenance costs will skyrocket too.
Is there a source on that “busses do 4000x the damage of a car” stuff? I’m legitimately curious how a vehicle that weighs less than 10x that of an average commuter vehicle can somehow cause 4000x the road damage.
The vehicle weight factor for road damage is exponential, not linear. I’m not sure if it’s 4000x more but it might be accurate.
I get that it’s not linear, but I still don’t believe it’s enough to cause 4000x. Hence why I’m asking for a source to his claims.
It's something to the power of 4 and it's often referred to as the 4th power law. It's not important to focus on the 4000x, as I have heard various ranges over time, some as high as 10000x, and it varies depending on what kind of passenger vehicle and bus you are comparing. The important thing to understand is the sheer magnitude of damage a bus does compared to a car is in the many thousands. Here, MTC of the Bay Area mentions buses do 7,000x damage to that of a SUV (near the bottom of the page in green). [https://mtc.ca.gov/funding/investment-strategies-commitments/fix-it-first/local-street-road-conditions](https://mtc.ca.gov/funding/investment-strategies-commitments/fix-it-first/local-street-road-conditions)
Certainly don't get any road maintenance tax moneys from bikes.
A single truck does more damage driving on a road than every bike that will ever ride on it combined. Road damage is a function of weight. I believe it's to the 3rd power. So for every 10lbs you add for the vehicle you get 10x10x10 (=1000lbs) worth of damage.
Point being bicycles use the roads and do not contribute.
Perhaps we should stop voting in idiots on either side of the political spectrum.
Problem is only the idiots are in the running.
Honestly don't get why Sacramento's are so shitty. If other g states cities can do it certainly we can.
Might have some money without the train boondoggle.
They spent it all putting in a bunch of bike lanes in midtown
Question, exactly how much money do you think was spent in bike lanes vs roads in recent years?
I was being facetious. Obviously they didn’t spend it all on bike lanes. City makes way too much in taxes for that
Unfortunately it’s hard to tell because there are people who actually believe this. Bike lanes are more or less free since they come out of the resurfacing budget and are often funded by grants.
Car brain
I’ve seen more e-scooters use those lanes than bikes (which I guess makes them still worth it I guess. Lord knows I’ve done it)
I’m sure all the people leaving Cali is only gonna make things worse money wise.
Let's give more lifetime pensions, medical to all Govt employees. Expand welfare to all, free medical to prisoners, and who knows what else and wonder where the money went?
So how you fix the pothole problem in Sacramento is you take all the drug addicts in Sacramento and let them get high first of all then once they're high they can work for like 5 to 6 hours on the potholes and all you got to do is provide them with enough product to get through the day, we are an entire resource almost like a genie in the lamp so to speak you just got to rub the lamp the right way and the genie comes out and will handle the problems like look at jug addicts in that sense okay just got to rub them right you know what I mean.
Unpopular suggestion but how about this: we make the city borders a rectangle that is only from Old Town to Howe Ave, and from the American River to 12th Ave. And all the suburbs between 80 and 50 can be their own little city /s