Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

 Just took a trip to Portland.  More on the trip later.  Today I am just going to write about driving to and from the airport.  Trying to avoid going to LAX, which means a terrible drive through the 405, we decided to book a flight from Santa Barbara airport.  The distance is about the same but generally it is about half hour shorter than going to LAX, about an hour normally.  It is also a more pleasant drive passing the Pacific Ocean.

But now there is construction along a big stretch of the 101.  With the Labor Day weekend traveling and a couple of minor accidents, the drive took 3 hours and almost caused us to miss the flight.  On the way back, with multiple construction going on at night and the lane closures and lights shinning in your eyes, it was a very difficult and slow drive.

This makes me think about the infrastructure that we are trying to improve with the new spending bill.  It is a large amount but is not enough and the money is poorly spent.  This stretch of the 101 is going to cost at least 600 million and not all the money is spoken for.  It is supposed to finish in 2026 even though it has been going on for at least 3 years.  The same with freeway 60 near my in-laws house.  All these constructions which I doubt will make a big difference in our traffic situations will cost about a billion and take more than half a decade to complete.

I am think, most of the time the lanes are cut off in these construction zones but there is no work being done except at night where old drivers like me are practically blinded by their lights.  We are talking about a billion dollars for the two projects which will enlarge the two freeways somewhat but I don't see the benefit because the bottleneck areas are not going to be better.  I think they would be better off spending money on fixing bridges which may collapse soon and improving public transportation.

The cost of these works are not justified.  After the Northridge earthquake a big freeway collapsed and the estimate of the repair was several years.  The government agreed to give a bonus of tens of millions if it can be done in a year.  Well, it was done and the company got the bonus.  I think the government overpaid in the first place.  I think in China it would have been done in a couple of months without a bonus.  Or heads would roll, literally perhaps.  While I don't condone execution, I wonder if the mafia runs construction companies.  And is the mafia contributing to the election of public officials?