Infrastructure : Los Angeles thinking of ways to shore up aging infrastructure

Published 3 September 2014

Los Angeles, the second-largest city in the nation by population size, has been dealing with crumbling infrastructure for years now. More than 10 percent of the city’s 7,200 miles of water pipes were built ninety years ago. About 40 percent of the region’s 6,500 miles of roads and highways are graded D or F, requiring so much money to fix them that the city is simply concentrating its maintenance efforts on C-graded roads, since they cost less to fix. Additionally, more than 4,000 of the 10,750 miles of sidewalks seriously need repair, according to city officials.

Los Angeles, the second-largest city in the nation by population size, has been dealing with breaking infrastructure for years now. More than 10 percent of the city’s 7,200 miles of water pipes were built ninety years ago. About 40 percent of the region’s 6,500 miles of roads and highways are graded D or F, requiring so much money to fix them that the city is simply concentrating its maintenance efforts on C-graded roads, since they cost less to fix. Additionally, more than 4,000 of the 10,750 miles of sidewalks seriously need repair, according to city officials.

Marcie L. Edwards, the general manager of the Department of Water and Power, insists that the city’s pipes are better than those in some cities, and replacement efforts have been in the works for quite some time. “Our system is by no means falling apart,” Edwards said. “We live in a very densely populated environment. These are big jobs that are incredibly impactful on neighborhoods and congested streets,” noting that her department needs more time to catch up with repairs.

Critics, however, are blaming the failing infrastructure on a lack of funds.According to the New York Times, the cash-strained municipality, with an annual budget of $26 billion, needs an estimated $8.1 billion to fix roads and water pipes. Official estimate that $3.6 billion would be spent on the worst roads, $1.5 billion to repair sidewalks, and $3 billion to replace aging water pipes, like the one that ruptured in July on the campus of theUniversity of California, Los Angeles. The 90-year-old water main hurled chunks of asphalt forty feet into the air.

Earlier this year, some city leaders debated asking voters to approve a plan to add half a cent to the 9-cent city sales tax, but they eventually decided against putting the measure up for vote until November 2016, to give the city more time to present a winning measure to the tax-averse residents of Los Angeles. The Times notes that the proposed tax increase would have raised at least $3.6 billion which could have been used for road construction.

Mayor Eric Garcetti is now advocating a more holistic plan for fixing the city’s infrastructure by taking into account the transportation needs of the future. “We have to build a city that people can be happy to walk in and drive in, but we also have to account for the transit revolution that’s coming,” he said. “If we spend billions and billions on car-only infrastructure — ignoring pedestrian, bicycle and transit users — we may look back 10 years from now and say, ‘Whoops, maybe we should have tied all those things together.’”

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