Every trip we take begins or ends on a local street. Roadways are some of our most precious transportation assets.
Local streets and roads provide access to jobs, homes, schools, shopping, medical care and recreation.
As with any asset, regular maintenance is required to keep our roadways working. Yet the condition of pavement on the Bay Area’s local streets and roads is “fair” at best.
The Bay Area scores a 66 out of a possible 100 points for pavement conditions. A score of 60 marks a need for major rehabilitation.
Can the Bay Area have better roads? Learn more in Street Fight, a close-up look at the challenges facing streets and roads around the region.
Spend $1 or $5
MTC has long advocated pavement preservation. And we have set our targets to achieve a score of 75.
A city or county that spends $1 on timely maintenance to keep a section of roadway in good condition — would have to spend $5 to restore the same road if the pavement is allowed to deteriorate to a pavement condition index score below 60.
The local streets and roads owned and maintained by the Bay Area’s nine counties and 101 cities include nearly 43,000 lane-miles of pavement.
Add curbs and gutters, sidewalks, storm drains, traffic signs, signals and lights needed for functioning roadways — that’s a big network.
To replace this network would cost something on the order of $40 billion or more.
Learn more about the challenges and costs of maintaining our local roadways via Street Fight, MTC's special six-part, multimedia report.
Heavy vehicles such as trucks and buses put far more stress on pavement than your car does.
A bus exerts more than 7,000 times the stress than does a typical SUV.
And a garbage truck exerts more than 9,000 times as much stress as an SUV. Not surprisingly, cracks appear more quickly on streets with large traffic volumes and/or heavy use by trucks and buses.
