ROADS TO RUIN; LONG-DEFERRED STREET REPAIRS APPROACHING CRITICAL STAGE.

Byline: Steve Carney Staff Writer

Decrepit bridges, potholes and traffic jams waste 76 hours and $1,348 per year for the average Los Angeles driver, and sap $11.9 billion from the county as a whole, according to a new report.

And while the number of drivers has mushroomed, California is $110 billion behind in road repairs and improvements, according to the report released Wednesday by Transportation California, a coalition of contractors and unions.

In Los Angeles County alone, there are $15 billion worth of unmet needs - half of the 56,026 miles of roads in the county are substandard, the report said.

For the San Fernando Valley, the report listed as priorities $800 million to expand the often-paralyzed 101-405 freeway interchange; nearly $400 million for car-pool lanes on the 5, 170 and 405 freeways and $1.3 billion for sound walls.

``We wanted to sound the alarm,'' said Lawrence W. Fisher, executive director of Transportation California. ``We have a system that's 40 to 50 years old that we're not maintaining.''

The release of the study coincides with debate in the Legislature over whether to place a bond on the November 2000 ballot and how much to set aside for repairs and improvements. One proposal would spend $8 billion.

The report's authors also hope to push legislators to find other ways to offset lagging gas tax revenue for road work.

``I'm very glad attention is turning to this,'' said state Assemblyman Wally Knox, D-Los Angeles. For motorists caught in the traffic and congestion caused by substandard roads, he said, ``infrastructure needs are a much more palpable and utterly maddening problem.''

The Transportation California study found that needed freeway lanes have not been added and aging bridges have gone unrepaired - more than a quarter of all the state's bridges can't handle traffic because they're obsolete or structurally deficient.

``As opposed to dealing with the problem when it was relatively small, now it has mushroomed,'' said Nate Brogin, a Valley civic leader who sits on the Planning and Transportation Committee of the Southern California Association of Governments.

And, Brogin said, the problem is spilling off the freeways onto the area's arterial streets. Drivers fleeing freeway congestion are putting more traffic on surface streets, quickly degrading those, as well.

The problem stands to get much worse.

``It seems to be the modus operandi of government to react to the immediate problem'' while ignoring long-range needs, said David W. Fleming, chairman of the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley and a former state Transportation Commission member. ``That's one of the reasons we're in the fix we're in.''

Growing beyond capacity

Between 1967 and 1997, the number of registered vehicles in California went up 130 percent, while state road construction increased only 29 percent. The boom in traffic has battered the state's roads and freeways, but at the same time California has ignored maintenance needs for 10 years, Fisher said.

California doesn't need pie-in-the-sky projects like high-speed rail or freeway double-decking, he said, but basic maintenance to make sure the roads and bridges we have already don't fail.

In the next 20 years, California is expected to add about 12 million people - about one-third of the state's current population, and equal to the current combined population of Washington, Oregon, Nevada and Arizona. And 6.8 million of those newcomers are bound for Southern California.

The current congestion trend will drop average freeway speeds to 15 mph by 2020, Brogin said.

``If we don't do the repairs, if you live 40 miles away we're talking about a three-hour commute,'' he said.

Infrastructure maintenance has been ignored for 10 years, with state transportation funding instead going to repairs and retrofitting after the Loma Prieta and Northridge earthquakes, El Nino costing $500 million in roadway damage, and legislators dipping into the highway fund to bail out Orange County from bankruptcy, Fisher said.

``This has been a terrible decade for transportation,'' he said.

Now the state has finally begun addressing the transportation needs, Fisher said.

Paying the bill

Gov. Gray Davis has assembled a panel to review infrastructure needs into the next century. Legislators are looking for ways to replace gas-tax money that has dropped to 70 percent of expected levels because of economic changes and greater fuel efficiency in cars.

Another hope is for the proposed bond measure for road and freeway repair and mass-transit rehabilitation. The bond, proposed by state Sen. John Burton, D-San Francisco, started at $16 billion, but has shrunk as it has marched through the Legislature, Fleming said.

If it makes it to the November 2000 ballot, passage would require a two-thirds approval by California voters.

``People understand this is money that has to be spent,'' Fleming said. ``I think they can make a credible case. The problem is, you've got to show people the money being spent is going to alleviate their current problem.''

Knox pushed for two projects to add lanes to the 101/405 freeway interchange, and the state Transportation Commission approved $7.9 million for the work in July. But Knox called those projects ``Step 1.''

``The San Fernando Valley really needs to be part of that process and not be left out,'' he said.

And Fisher said attention to needed repairs and improvements now will keep costs statewide from ballooning in the future - like small potholes turning into huge chuckholes, he said.

``The big push that's beginning now should have begun a few years ago, but that's where we are,'' Fisher said. ``We've got to focus on not letting this huge investment we've made in our highways go to waste.''

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Photo: (color) An island in the middle of Topanga Canyon Boulevard in Woodland Hills is removed as part of a road improvement project.

Evan Yee/Staff Photographer

Box: Traffic to do list