California’s Debt Problem and Its Cause

If you pay attention to current events as of late you’ll know California State has a massive debt problem (just like the USA as a whole and I think I even read Oregon State has a problem too—over consumption if you ask me, but that’s a story for another day). Anyway, one way California can reduce its debt load is reduce the number of road signs it puts up. There are way too many. Let’s start with the mile marker postings. Normally, as the name suggests, a mile marker tells you how many whole miles along the highway you’ve travelled (or have yet to travel). Not in California, nope, you’ll see a mile marker for 20.00 miles on the US 101. Then what’s that right after it, oh now we’ve gone 20.05 miles on the US 101. And if that’s not enough there’s another one saying 20.15 miles on the US 101. Thanks for letting me know, but I think one post for 20 miles and another one whole mile later at 21 miles is enough. Just think, someone was paid to go out there, measure those distances and put up all those mileage markers. Does anybody care? No! Everybody has a car with an odometer (or in our case a GPS). Waste of time and money if you ask me.

Other useless signs I see a lot of are those WRONG WAY signs. I see them all over the place on the highways, big ones at every angle (just make sure you see at least one of them from every direction) on the left hand side of the road. Doesn’t everybody know how to drive? No need to tell everybody that you should be driving on the right hand side of the road and not down the left hand side of the road. Common sense if you ask me. It’s as if the California Transportation Department thinks everyone comes up to an intersection and all the rules of the road slip their mind so they need a good reminding. “Gorsh… what d’ I d’ now? D’ I go with the flow of traffic or d’ I head into oncoming traffic? Headin’ into oncoming traffic sounds like a gud idear. Wait just a dang minute that there sign says WRONG WAY. Phew… if it twern’t for that sign I’d ‘ave gorn and dun sumphin stupid.” If you find yourself thinking that then you then you need to stay off the road. The government shouldn’t be babying everyone with useless signage on your account.

If California is bent on wasting money on signage then they should look into putting up more bicycle route signs. We’re (somewhat) following the Pacific Coast bicycle route down California and half the time we don’t know where to go. Sometimes we just get dumped onto a freeway where bicycles aren’t allowed. In these cases we never saw a sign telling us that the Pacific Coast bicycle route is now headed in this direction to detour this freeway. We end up having to make up our own route and somehow manage to join up with the Pacific Coast bicycle route again (maybe 20 miles later). Other times there is signage that says turn right at the next street. So we go to that street and find it doesn’t really look like a bicycle route at all. It turns out that the bicycle route turns right several blocks ahead. Sometimes those signs really mean turn right, right now, and other times it means turn right up ahead—it’s a toss-up. All of these things happened to us today (August 1^st, 2011). For example we got dumped on a freeway (US 101) where bicycles aren’t allowed just outside of Carpinteria (10 miles past Santa Barbara). We ended up taking the Casitas Pass road to Ventura instead. That was 25 miles as opposed to 13 miles on the freeway (and I’m sure there was a bicycle route along the waterfront we could’ve taken). And as the name suggests (Casitas Pass) there were some 300 meter climbs we had to deal with before getting to Ventura (the freeway route was flat). So what we thought would be a 75 mile cruise along the beaches turned into 100 mile workout through the desert (we saw a nice lake though: Lake Casitas, and some oil pumps [never saw those before], and the desert air always smells nice).

Sorry, went off on a little rant there. I guess those are the challenges you’ve got to expect when bicycle touring. Now if only California and the USA would face up to their challenges and reduce their debts by not spending so much on frivolous/useless things.

PS: When you’re on a bicycle all day you have a lot of time to read every sign you see. One good thing I can say about all of California’s signage: it provides a lot of reading material, albeit repetitive.