By Anonymous Contra Costa County resident:
I travel from Antioch to San Ramon every day, and I don’t know who needs to hear this, but Contra Costa’s roads are a disgrace. And I’m talking specifically about the daily disaster that is Ygnacio Valley Road, I-680, and Highway 4. Ygnacio is a minefield of potholes and cracked pavement coming from Walnut Creek into Concord, yet it’s still treated like a major thoroughfare. It’s the only road people from Clayton and Concord can rely on—and it’s barely holding together. At this point, I’ve stopped dodging potholes and just started waving at them. Then there’s I-680, where the traffic is either crawling at 12 mph or slammed to a full stop because of yet another lane merge that nobody seems interested in fixing. And don’t even get me started on Highway 4. What’s the point of widening it when the on-ramps still dump people into bumper-to-bumper chaos with no room to breathe? These aren’t rural backroads. These are major arteries in one of the most populated counties in California, and they look like they belong in a forgotten part of the state. We pay some of the highest taxes in the country—where is the return on that? It’s long past time for Contra Costa County, local cities and Caltrans to stop slapping duct tape on these roads and pretending it’s “infrastructure progress.” We need real investment, real repairs, and real accountability.
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Feel free to add your comment below….
You get what you voted for!
That was well said – especially regarding YVR … but… not the last comment saying “real investment”. All of us have paid way too much in local taxes, gas taxes, etc. that gets siphoned off for community and state leaders pet projects – they need to stop the “deferred maintenance” and demonstrate responsibility to the constituents and accountability to all residents.
“This is the only place in the world where the pavements consist
exclusively of holes with asphalt around them. And they are the
most economical in the world, because holes never get out of repair.”
–Mark Twain 1907
.
Ancient roads were eternal,
https://tinyurl.com/mpvtacpf
.
Dodging potholes, IF you’re lucky,
https://tinyurl.com/yax7p4mx
Perhaps we should start charging a toll on those heavily used arteries that are used mostly by people who don’t live in Concord/ W. Creek.
… will never happen – that would make the politicos in say Concord or WC unpopular thus probably not a viable candidate for re-election.
And to add insult to injury, city of Concord is low balling the repairs, the roads in our subdivision have been horrible for years, no repairs, tax dollars coming in, nothing being done. This spring we are finally getting action, was told originally by crew that we were getting new pavement…… but as expected, they came in and applied a slurry seal over the crumbling cracked roadway….. been 1 month now, and sealed road is already coming apart, once we get rain, it’s going to fail quicker…… this band aid is a joke, being played on the taxpayers who are paying for much more than they’re getting
… WC did the same thing – band-aids and patches over band-aids and patches …at least Concord repaved the major artery correctly (Treat) for part of the way
It’s like filling a big dent in a car body with Bondo and painting over the damage. It might look OK for a while however the repair will fail shortly. The only reason to make such a repair is to unload the car on some poor sucker before the repair fails.
In California, taxpayers are the poor suckers.
You can contact the Contra Costa County Transporation Authority as they are responsible for all transportation-related issues that are countywide. Last I recall, they were located in the Treat Towers building next to the Embassy Suites.
The core problem is that all the local jurisdictions paused road maintenance in the late 2000s long enough for road maintenance to get much more expensive. In Concord, Measure V was supposed to fix this but the city hasn’t done a good enough job controlling costs so they have only managed to keep the city in the zone of spending lots of money but having bad roads.
Unfortunately, the only solution is to spend money fast enough to get the roads in good condition by temporarily diverting money from other things.
I live off port chicago & north 6th in Concord and totally agree, CC roads are a mess & have been for a while.
Certain sections of YVR are likely as close to being in a paint shaker as most of us will experience.