Which city has the best-maintained roads in the Bay Area?<\/p>\n
The wealthy Marin County suburb of Larkspur lays claim to that title, according to a new report from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission<\/a>, a regional agency overseeing local transit systems.<\/p>\n The city with the most potholes and bumpy streets? Vallejo, the only community in the region where road conditions are considered \u201cpoor,\u201d according to the report.<\/p>\n Overall, the transit agency found that the Bay Area\u2019s 44,000 miles of local roads are wearing down, with the typical stretch of roadway likely needing repairs soon. The report assigned each of the 110 cities and counties in the region a score on a 100-point scale. For the tenth year in a row, the Bay Area\u2019s roads registered an average of 67, considered \u201cfair.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe good news is our cities and counties are continuing to hold the line against major deterioration,\u201d the commission\u2019s chair, Sue Noack, also the mayor of Pleasant Hill, said in a statement. \u201cBut the bad news is we\u2019re still just as far away from bringing the regional average into the \u2018very good\u2019 range as we were a decade ago.\u201d<\/p>\n Affluent cities tend to rank higher in the report, with Larkspur, Palo Alto, Cupertino, Orinda and Hillsborough all scoring over 80, considered \u201cvery good.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s not always the case, however. As recently as 2017, Larkspur\u2019s roads were rated \u201cpoor\u201d in the annual roads report. But that changed with the city\u2019s passage of two sales tax measures to help rehabilitate its 65 miles of streets.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen the community supported a sales tax measure in November 2017, the (city council) promised that the first thing it would do was fix the roads,\u201d Larkspur City Manager Dan Schwarz said in an email. \u201cIt took five years to completely rehabilitate the system. The City is committed to maintaining this important asset. Our goal now is to make it hard to believe Larkspur ever had poor-quality roads.\u201d<\/p>\n Some funding for local roads also comes from the state and federal government, though they spend more on highway systems<\/a>.<\/p>\n Vallejo, with among the highest poverty rates in the Bay Area, ranked last with a score of 44.<\/p>\n \u201cYears of underfunding in the City of Vallejo has led to significant deterioration of city roads,\u201d the Solano County Civil Grand Jury wrote in a report<\/a> this year.<\/p>\n To upgrade the crumbling streets, Vallejo voters approved a sales tax in 2022 to raise an estimated $18 million annually, with the majority of funds going toward road repairs.<\/p>\n Vallejo officials did not respond to a request for comment on the city\u2019s road maintenance efforts.<\/p>\n Cities just above Vallejo in the rankings include wealthier communities such as Berkeley and Millbrae, as well as places with higher poverty rates, such as Richmond and Pittsburg\u00a0\u2014 revealing that healthier tax bases don\u2019t necessarily translate to better roads.<\/p>\n Of the Bay Area\u2019s three largest cities, Oakland came in last with a score of 58, rating its roads as \u201cat risk.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite the low score, city officials said they have made progress in fixing Oakland\u2019s notorious pothole-filled streets in recent years, thanks to voter-approved bond measures that contribute to about $45 million a year for road maintenance.<\/p>\n