Reason’s 22^nd Annual Highway Report ranked California 42nd. While this is still in the lowest category, the ranking has steadily improved over the years, moving up from a low of 46th. Because of data-collection delays, the rankings only go through 2013.

The study measures a number of important factors: Road conditions on freeways and primary commercial highways, the state of each state’s bridges, fatality rates and various costs per mile – administrative, maintenance, capital costs and expenditures.

California has done particularly poorly on the spending side of the equation. It ranked 44th in total disbursements per mile; 43rd in maintenance disbursements per mile; 40th in capital and bridge disbursements per mile; and 47th in administrative disbursements. That reinforces a California state auditor study from last summer showing that Caltrans may have as many as 3,500 unnecessary job positions.

The state’s overall per-mile capital and bridges cost totaled nearly $170,000 – far costlier than highest-ranked South Carolina, at nearly $21,000, or middle-ranked Utah, at nearly $78,000. But California wasn’t nearly the worst. Worst-ranked New Jersey spends $839,000 per mile; Florida spends more than $380,000; and Illinois spends nearly $202,000. On administrative costs, California spends more than $47,000 per mile, compared to $1,107 per mile in top-ranked Kentucky and $3,762 in 10th ranked Texas.

On the bad side, California had one of the highest proportions of rural interstate mileage in poor condition, at 6.52 percent. Its urban interstate mileage in poor condition was even worse, at 13.32 percent, which isn’t a surprise to anyone who regularly navigates the Los Angeles, San Diego or Bay Area highway systems. The survey only looks at state-owned highway systems, not at the myriad local and regional systems that are in various conditions.

“The good news is that California reported the lowest percentage of deficient bridges of any state in the nation,” according to Reason Vice President Adrian Moore, writing in the Orange County Register. California also ranked 10th in highway fatalities with a rate of 0.9 per 100 million vehicle miles. The best performance was in Massachusetts, with 0.58 fatalities per 100 million miles and the worst was Montana, with 1.9 fatalities per 100 million miles. Those rates, however, have been dropping nationwide.

One of the survey’s authors, Reason Senior Fellow David T. Hartgen, told me Caltrans didn’t do anything dramatic between 2012 and 2013 to explain the rating improvement – but it did improve a significant number of bridges and roadways.

“A widening performance gap seems to be emerging between most states that are making progress and a few states that are finding it difficult to improve,” according to the report’s authors. “There is also increasing evidence that higher-level road systems (Interstates, other freeways and principal arterials) are in better shape than lower-level road systems, particularly local roads.”

The good news: California is among those states that are improving. The bad news: It has an extremely long way to go to reduce congestion and bring state and local roads up to snuff. On a controversial note, California’s recently released transportation plan seems to downplay the importance of expanding the state’s highway and road infrastructure.

The “California Transportation Plan 2040” focuses more on battling climate change than on expanding the state’s already clogged network of highways. “By 2040, California will have completed an integrated rail system linking every major region in the state, with seamless one-ticket transfers to local transit,” wrote Transportation Secretary Brian Kelly.

“Responding to the desires of millennials and aging baby boomers alike, we will further invest in complete, safe pedestrian and bicycle networks,” Kelly added. He also promised a new approach toward lowering maintenance costs on roads and bridges. But the state’s blueprint relies heavily on alternative transportation sources, rather than on freeways and road construction, given the “transportation system must do its part to reduce these threats (climate change) to our environment and health.”

Other reports paint a mostly gloomy picture of California’s transportation situation. Last year, the Senate Transportation and Infrastructure Development Committee – during a special session designed to come up with additional funding for transportation programs – reported that “54 of California’s 58 counties have an average pavement rating of ‘poor’ or ‘at risk,’ with much of this deterioration occurring over the past six years.”

Reason found California to top the national charts on bridge condition, but the state Senate pointed to 3,000 “structurally deficient bridges.” The committee pointed to an expected doubling of freight moved on California’s freeways (from 2002 to 2035), to suggest that the state’s infrastructure will face an accelerated level of deterioration.

The session failed to come up with a long-term funding solution, but that will no doubt be a top item for the Legislature next year.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. He is based in Sacramento. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

The rest is just rhetoric to fool the masses. But the masses are catching on. Reason.com reports:

Americans don’t paint a pretty picture of their public servants in the new national Reason-Rupe poll. Americans tell Reason-Rupe that 75 percent of all politicians are “corrupted” by campaign donations and lobbyists.  And they say 70 percent of politicians use their political power to help their friends and hurt their enemies.

No wonder just 17 percent approve of the job Congress is doing.  Or that President Obama’s approval rating is just 43 percent, with 51 percent disapproving.

And while the Supreme Court just struck down limits on campaign contributions to federal candidates, the new Reason-Rupe poll finds Americans are actually more concerned about how elected officials misuse their power and taxpayer money once they’re in office than they are worried about campaign contributions.

Happy New Year!

Are you familiar with the state that has such an innovative and advanced marijuana industry that quality control extends to making sure pot brands consistently produce the same sensations? Where entrepreneurs are turning to increasingly sophisticated tools to improve their product and reach out to customers?

No, I’m not talking about Colorado or Washington state. I’m talking about California. Reason magazine’s Greg Beato has a fascinating look at the Golden State’s national leadership in a field, so to speak, that few know of. Beato considers this development an inspiring model of unrestrained, risk-taking, innovative capitalism:

“A previously forbidden sector of commerce has evolved into an increasingly professionalized multibillion-dollar industry, complete with a robust retail infrastructure, a lucrative trade in equipment and supplies, trade shows, media outlets, educational institutions, and a surprisingly vast supply of entrepreneurial stoners who seem to get at least as buzzed by marketing, product innovation, and event management as they do by a few puffs of Platinum Skywalker. All without any regulatory hand holding from Sacramento. …

“We live in an age of pervasive government intervention. The Code of Federal Regulations has added 43,504 pages since California first passed Proposition 215 in 1996. Yet while this bureaucratic bulwark was growing as thick as the Great Wall of China, our nation’s largest state, which doubles as the world’s eighth-largest economy, was permitting the sale of a substance that had been illegal for 60-plus years. In theory, this wild, wild west should have exploded into chaos, or at least something a little more raucous than a bunch of entrepreneurial Ph.D.s monitoring the fungus levels of freshly cultivated Lemon Kush.

“Yes, there has been drama over the years: NIMBY complaints, dispensary bans, and, of course, federal raids. But the most visible manifestations of California’s medical marijuana industry have been hydro stores in strip malls, advertisements in alternative weeklies, and $12,000 trim machines. While the threat of federal intervention and city-wide regulations have played significant roles in the industry’s evolution, capitalism arguably has been its most functional regulator.”

There is a downside to this tale

There is a downside to this tale that Reason’s article doesn’t address. CalWatchdog’s Katy Grimes had a grim piece over the summer about the toll some pot growers are taking on wilderness areas.

But as a libertarian who thinks the drug war is crazy and that excessive government regulation is destructive, I found Beato’s story deeply enjoyable.

Read it here.