It's official: The roads in Los Angeles have been judged the worst in the country. And according to a new study, all those bumps and potholes are costing Southern California drivers plenty.
If you have ever driven around greater Los Angeles, it may not surprise you to hear we have bad roads. But how bad are they?
Hit the road in the Los Angeles-Orange County area, and you're bound to hit some bumps as well. A new report about the state of American roadways puts Southern California at the bottom of the list.
The national transportation research group TRIP finds that in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana urban area, 64 percent of the major roads are in poor condition.
As a result, the group says, it costs the average driver here $832 a year in extra car maintenance, fuel consumption and tire wear.
The new ranking is not surprising to Caltrans officials.
"I think it's kind of logical, because we have the most cars, we have the most traffic, and so of course our roads take more of a beating," said California Department of Transportation spokesperson Judy Gish.
Gish says funding for road maintenance projects has been declining.
Meantime, a U.S. Department of Transportation report says road and highway improvement funding needs to rise by 21 percent just to keep roads in their current condition.
Gish says Caltrans is looking at a budget for the upcoming year that is $1.5 billion less than what they need.
"The roads are at least 50 years old," said Gish. "They were built for a quarter of the amount of traffic, so it's just critical that we get that funding."
But the plea for more money comes just three months after California raised state gas taxes, now the highest in the country.
But the worst-ranked roads or not, plenty of drivers say they get along just fine on our streets.
