50 States, 50 Ways to Move, Stop 5 of 50
Last stop, Arkansas gave us a puzzle: almost the same road miles as Alabama but half the driving. California is the opposite. It has about 1.8 times Arkansas’s road miles, but its drivers cover eight times as many miles.
The Road Network
These figures are from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), Highway Statistics 2023.
- 177,334 miles of public roads: 75,822 rural and 101,511 urban. California is second only to Texas in road miles.
- 2,313 miles of Interstate: 1,066 rural and 1,247 urban, including I-5, which runs the length of the state from Mexico to Oregon.
- Those Interstates are only about 1.3% of California’s road miles but carry about 28% of its driving.
- California’s state highways, about 15,000 miles or 8% of the road miles, carry about 58% of all vehicle travel (Caltrans, California Public Road Data 2023).
The Travel
In 2023, vehicles in California traveled 316.6 billion miles, more than any other state. California has 4% of the nation’s public road miles but about 10% of all the driving in the United States, nearly one mile in every ten. About 81% of that driving is on urban roads (FHWA, Highway Statistics 2023, Table VM-2).
That is about 510 billion kilometers, roughly twice what the Australian government estimates for all vehicles in Australia in 2024-25.
The Commute
In 2024, 67.3% of California workers drove to work alone, against 69.2% for the US. California ranks eleventh lowest in the country. New York was lowest at 48.7%, and California sits just ahead of Arizona at 67.5% (US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 1-year data, 2024).
Safety
California recorded 4,061 traffic deaths in 2023, down almost 11% from 4,539 in 2022. Of the 2023 deaths, 1,355 (33%) involved an alcohol-impaired driver, and 1,106 were pedestrians, more than a quarter of the total. Another 583 were motorcyclists and 145 were bicyclists (California Office of Traffic Safety, using FARS data).
The Bridges
California has 26,014 bridges in the National Bridge Inventory (FHWA, 2026 release):
- Good: 12,883
- Fair: 12,240
- Poor: 891, or about 3.4%
California’s bridges also have more deck area than any state except Texas: about 341 million square feet.
The Trains
Caltrans and Amtrak run three state-supported rail routes: the Pacific Surfliner from San Diego to San Luis Obispo, the Capitol Corridor from San Jose to Auburn, and the San Joaquins through the Central Valley. The Pacific Surfliner carried about 2.0 million passengers in fiscal year 2024, making it one of the busiest intercity rail routes in the country (Amtrak data, via the Los Angeles Almanac).
The Zipper
California’s cleverest trick is on the Golden Gate Bridge. Its six narrow lanes cannot be widened, so the bridge changes instead. Each weekday morning, a yellow “zipper” truck lifts a concrete median barrier a lane at a time and moves it across the road. By 4:30 a.m., four lanes run south into San Francisco, and in the evening the barrier moves back so four run north. At other times it is three lanes each way.
The barrier was installed in January 2015 and runs about 13,340 feet. Before it, the bridge saw roughly 40 head-on collisions a year, more than a thousand since it opened in 1937, because only plastic cones separated the lanes. The Golden Gate Bridge District says it has virtually eliminated the possibility of head-on crashes.
Remember Alabama turning I-65 around for hurricanes? California does the same thing to a bridge, twice a day, every day.
Next stop: Colorado, the Centennial State.
Sources: FHWA Highway Statistics 2023 (Tables HM-20 and VM-2); Caltrans, California Public Road Data 2023; California Office of Traffic Safety, Traffic Safety Quick Stats (FARS and SWITRS data); U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2024 via America’s Health Rankings; FHWA National Bridge Inventory 2026; Los Angeles Almanac and LOSSAN Rail Corridor Agency; Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District; Metropolitan Transportation Commission; Australian Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics.