City aggressively tries to maintain its streets
By DANIEL ARCHULETA Managing Editor
Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of articles on the cost of commuting.
CITYWIDE Driving in the Los Angeles area can be hell. There’s traffic, high gas prices and the roads are seemingly in constant need of improvement.
Congestion has been and will continue to be a problem as long as people flock to this sun-drenched metropolis in search of better lives. Gas prices ebb and flow based on a set of circumstances that few outside of the State Department or the boardrooms of major oil companies can even begin to change. But, poor road conditions apparently can be controlled with a little help from municipal governments.
“Santa Monica has a very aggressive maintenance program that is associated with a resurfacing program,” said Bernardo “Bogee” Cline, the city’s superintendent of street maintenance. “(Santa Monica’s) alleys are better than L.A.’s streets.”
While local cities struggle to keep up with the wear and tear that hordes of cars and trucks inflict on streets, some seem to do worse than others. A recent study discovered that poor road conditions in Santa Monica’s neighbor, Los Angeles, cost the average driver nearly $800 a year. Things had gotten so bad in L.A. that two years ago Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced a sweeping plan to fill 1 million potholes. While the ambitious project recently filled its 800,000th pothole, the study by TRIP, a national transportation research group, illustrates that more needs to be done to protect drivers from incurring costs related to pavement conditions.
“With state and federal transportation funding falling short, the cost of materials and repairs rising and traffic volumes increasing, transportation agencies will face a significant challenge in improving urban pavement conditions,” said William M. Wilkins, TRIP’s executive director.
With a number of major streets and boulevards flowing out of Los Angeles and into Santa Monica, this issue does-n’t stop at the city’s borders. Cline’s department is constantly on the look out for potholes and deteriorating road pavement. His office receives two to five calls each day from locals alerting him of problems across the city. Once a call comes in, he dispatches a crew to survey the situation and recommend a solution. If there’s a noticeable pothole, a patch truck manned by a pair of workers heads out to the location to fix the problem within 24 hours.
Aside from calls from residents, the street maintenance division also fields complaints via its Web site. The city also has an ongoing program that monitors street conditions citywide.
“We have a street inspection program that is run by our engineering division that is dedicated to resurfacing streets and figuring out what are the priorities,” Cline said. “It is a very impressive thing that (the engineering division) is doing.”
A survey of the city’s streets attest to Cline’s assertion that his department does an adequate job of maintenance. There are a number of alleys in the downtown area that show some wear, but nothing severe enough to cause damage to automobiles. Overall the city offers adequate driving conditions, but some aren’t completely sold.
“Commuting [to Santa Monica] from L.A., it’s easy to see that the roads here are better,” said Robert Ibarra, a software developer. “But, there are some spots [in the city] that need some work. There always seems to be problems on Colorado (Avenue) down by Fourth (Street).”
Ibarra said that the potholes in that area became so bad recently that he often takes a different route to get to downtown. A check of the intersection he cited does reveal some distressed conditions, but Cline said most of the problems there could be attributed to the recent rains and that his department had recently been dispatched to the area to patch a number of potholes.
If drivers believe that damage to their automobiles was caused by poor road conditions, they are directed to contact the city’s risk management division to file a formal complaint. Jonathon Lackey, the city’s liability claims administrator, said that such claims are rare and payouts even more rare.
“If we feel the damage was caused by something we knew about, we have to pay,” Lackey said. “If we weren’t aware of (the problem) we don’t pay out. It’s that simple.”
He attributes the lack of actual claims to the fact that the city goes to lengths to prevent its streets from deteriorating to the point where damage could occur.
“The city is very responsive to requests for repairs,” Lackey said. “We try to fix the problem before it gets to the point that my office has to hear about it.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 24, 2008. Read the original PDF.