I'd agree with your point on CA becoming more willing to actually build some roads. Between environmental concerns and taxes not being passed hardly anything at all was being built when I went to college in So Cal in the late 1980s. It surprises me when I go back now how much has been recently built or is underway.

I worry that my old home of Oregon is going to strangle itself in opposition to roads. The Portland metro area hasn't added a single mile of freeway since 1982, and really almost none since 1974. Not a single new mile is included in the region's long-term plan out to 2040, either. That despite the population growing by over 50% from 1974 to today, and probably 50% more by 2040.

Two examples: there are only two Columbia River crossings in the area, I-5 and I-205 (the next alteratives are 50 miles upstream or downstream). Both are overloaded, and the I-5 bridge is 90 years old and hopeless in a quake. Yet there has been real opposition, even from government bodies, to replacing the bridge. Quite a few citizens groups have settled around the notion of building a light rail / bicycle bridge only and putting a heavy toll ( $10 each way) on the existing old bridge to cut traffic and force people onto rail -- that idea almost won the support of the Portland City Council.

I considered a job at a college an hour SW of Portland, in Oregon's wine country. That rapidly growing area is served by a single state highway, which is the most congested and accident-prone in the state. But no money is being made available to do anything -- even though the problem really comes down to 5 to 7 miles of two-lane bottleneck. From some of the blogs I read (when trying to figure out how bad my commute would be), it was reported that state transportation planners said off the record to frustrated citizens in the area that building new roads is a waste of taxpayer's money: it will only be 10, 15 years tops before peak oil plus global warming mean the wholesale abandonment of personal automobiles.

I like public transit. I'm not a fan a sprawl. But if transportation officials really think personal autos will be dead in a decade and are making decisions on that basis, OR is in real trouble.