A significant piece of California's transportation revenue and spending puzzle is funding for local street and road maintenance. There is currently a tremendous disparity between funding for bigger ticket projects on the state-owned highway system, at the expense of funding for repairing local roads and streets. The state-owned highway system comprises only 13 percent of the state's entire road network. The local street and road network comprises 83 percent of the state's entire 373,000+ lane-miles of roadways, and 41 percent of it is in serious need of repair. Yet in 1997, spending on the state highway system averaged $62 per lane mile and spending on the local streets and roads network averaged just $7 per lane mile. Kings, Yolo, Glenn and Humboldt counties are now literally reverting paved roads back to gravel due to the cost of maintenance.

In 1990, the cities' and counties' share of the statewide gasoline tax revenues fell from 49 percent to 23 percent, translating into even greater inequities between local street and road spending and funding for state-owned highways.

Spending on New Highway Construction

A common assertion in the transportation debate is that California has not spent any significant money on highway construction in recent years. Yet a closer look at expenditures by the Department of Transportation (Caltrans) shows that, in addition to the agency's commitment to operational and system efficiency improvements, a significant expenditure of funds is still dedicated to physical capacity expansion. The vast majority of these expenditures are made in the state's metropolitan areas, and have been growing after a downward trend recorded in the early 1990s due mostly to seismic upgrade programs. As a result of this increase in spending on new construction and widening projects, California has added more than 3,200 lane-miles of state highway since 1987.