The people who live on bumpy Charles Hill Road in Orinda have something to cheer about because of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package.

Orinda - which ranks lowest among Bay Area cities for local road conditions - plans to spend some of its job stimulus money to fix the narrow, winding road where drivers regularly steer around potholes and big cracks.

The condition of Charles Hill Road is not an isolated problem. Cities and counties throughout California are struggling to hold roads together as voters resist tax and fee hikes, and road maintenance funds heavily dependent on sales tax decline as people drive less and buy less. 

“Our street has gone from being really bad, to downright dangerous,” Nancy Katz, a Charles Hill Road resident, wrote in an email. ”From huge and deep potholes that wreck your car, to the fact that we all now try to work around them (so we don’t further wreck our cars) so we drive around them, which has many of us driving in the middle of the street.” Read the rest of this entry »