“All of this might have been easier to swallow if MTC were doing a good job. But have you looked at the Bay Area’s traffic lately? Or ridden public transit? Commutes take longer. Tolls are going up. Fares and property taxes are escalating.”
Yep, we commute from Danville to Napa several times a week. You have to “choose” the time of day ( there is about a 3 hour window mid-day) to make the round trip, because in neither direction can you get into or out of Napa thanks to the lack of needed interchange improvements in Napa County. The real kicker is that they made highway 12 through Jamison Canyon four lanes, except for one single lane overpass that connects it to I80. So during evening commute the entire length of Jamison Canyon (6 miles) backs up to Highway 29 at the Napa Airport. If you elect to take 29 to Vallejo, you have to traverse the little $hithole town of American Canyon, which the State has allowed to “signalize” a half dozen cross streets that intersect with Hwy 29.
I’d suggest against riding BART because you may be mugged. And they just raised the state gasoline tax by $.12 per gallon and increase vehicle license fees by 20% to “pay for the road repairs.” But the enabling legislation doesn’t prevent the Legislature from using this money to buy more votes with our illegal alien population.
We’re too old to move, so we just hope we live to see California’s coming financial collapse, because that will be the only thing that will get the RATS out.
We bought a second home in North Idaho earlier this year. Our car registration fees are about one-quarter of the California fees and the roads there are FAR better than here. The Idaho roads are not torn to pieces and are not filled with curb-to-curb potholes. The main arterial roads down here in the South Bay must be the worst in the entire nation. Of course, the ten North Idaho (Panhandle) counties have one-third million people — about the population of Sunnyvale, Mountain View and Palo Alto combined. But North Idaho is 21,000 square miles vs. 50 square miles for those three cities here on the peninsula.