Video Shows Crumbling State Of Southland Streets, Aims To Jolt Legislature Into Action
LOMITA (CBSLA.com) — A video, posted by labor unions and showing the crumbling state of many of the state's streets, is making waves in Southern California.
The unions and cities responsible for posting the "Bad Roads Tour 2015", including the California Alliance for Jobs, say they want the state to share the cost of fixing the streets. Many residents join them in stating that the declining state of the streets, cracked and riddled with potholes, are in desperate need of attention.
"People's cars getting pitted and windshields, and you can't really follow anybody because stuff comes up and splatters your car and damages your paint," Lomita resident Doug Nicol said.
The state legislature has been unable to agree on how to go about sharing the burden with local city governments to fix the problem, despite a special session that was called to address just that.
"The message to the legislature is (that) they have to do something," California Alliance for Jobs' John Frith said. "We've been kicking the can down the potholed road for more than thirty years. The amount of funding going into road maintenance simply isn't enough."
Lomita residents, however, say their local city government is doing little to repair the roads themselves.
"What they do is they just pour asphalt in a pothole, and that doesn't do anything," resident Duane DeArman said. "They need to resurface the streets, and make them smooth, like Torrance."
Officials from the Alliance say other local city governments outside of Lomita aren't doing much to address the issue either.
"Seventy-three percent of the roads in the Los Angeles area are considered to be in poor condition, and the average motorist in the Los Angeles region has to pay an extra thousand dollars a year in extra vehicle maintenance, everything from alignments and new tires to serious problems because the roads are so potholed," Frith said.
The issue of how to fund the repairs continues to be debated in Sacramento.
