Roads

The road is scarred with skid marks, some curved like snakes, others pencil straight. They shriek the fates of unlucky travelers who lost their lives; they mark the near-misses. It's not just the treacherous potholes, or the edges of the road nibbled away like cookies. It's not the dozing driver behind the glaring truck headlights about to veer onto the wrong side. People here in central Zimbabwe are afraid of something else.

Re "How to get from here to there," Opinion, Dec. 27 Buses, rail, bicycles and monorails all have something in common -- they don't work. These suggestions contain bountiful utopian thinking, but not one good new idea. Try improving what 95% of the commuters want -- the roads. David Mootchnik Huntington Beach

Gov. Deukmejian's proposal to finance highway improvements by revenue bonds is designed to avoid the state expenditure limitation imposed by the 1979 initiative. Interest paid from the general fund to bond holders does not count as an expenditure under the Gann limitation. I have an alternative suggestion. The state could return the excess revenues to school districts--most are spending way below their limitation. We have never had enough money to get close to the limit. The irony of a so-called fiscal conservative advocating going into debt to pay for roads, while telling schools to tighten their belts shows what a mess Californians have created for themselves.

We took a 10-day driving trip in Italy just a couple of weeks after the appearance of the article, "Those Italian Roads Can Really Drive You Crazy," Aug. 11. We are happy to report an entirely different impression. In more than 800 miles, a circuit from Florence through the nearby provinces, we never had anything that could be described as a close call. The roads were well-maintained and well-marked, the traffic was relatively light and the Italian drivers were skillful, conservative and polite.

Sections of Ventura Freeway on which the most citations are issued Drunk Speeding Driving Location Citations Arrests Arrests From Vineyard Avenue to 5,611 3,096 259 Las Posas Road From Moorpark Road to 4,155 2,667 75 the L.A. County line around Westlake Blvd. From Las Posas to 4,092 2,140 131 Old Conejo roads The most traveled sections of Ventura Freeway Junction with: Average Daily Travel: California 23 143,000 Ventu Park 136,000 California 1 115,000 Source: Calif.

Using a novel form of financing, the Ventura County Transportation Commission has reached a deal with Caltrans to widen a dangerous rural road that winds to the Cal State Channel Islands campus. The two-lane road in Camarillo and its interchange with the Ventura Freeway will undergo about $40 million worth of improvements as part of a 2-year-old plan that had stalled when the governor and Legislature diverted transportation construction funds to help deal with the state budget crisis.

Truckers with empty tanks or bellies stop here in this hamlet between Moscow and St. Petersburg, climb to the ground, stretch their legs and poke a cigarette between their lips. The drivers are worn out from grinding over the potholed, shoulder-less, often two-lane ribbon that is, improbably, Russia's main commercial thoroughfare. They haul the parts and pieces of a vast economy -- chicken legs, coils of rope, dinner plates -- over roads so jarring the cargo is often damaged before it arrives.

Judges: Forget the prostitutes. Let's get the "don't care" drunk drivers, who kill whole families, off the road. CAROLYN BRAKE Simi Valley

Re "Winding Paths for Roadless Lands," July 26: This story and Stewart Udall's "Bush's Dark Pages in Conservation History" (Commentary, July 26) simply illustrate that President Bush and cronies are no more or less than America's version of Saddam Hussein and sons enriching themselves when they ruled Iraq. The implications of the "Winding Paths" article made me both angry and sick to my stomach. Besides negating more and more wild lands -- an irreplaceable resource -- these roads will consequently contribute to more forest fires and the spectacle and hazard of more and more oversized SUVs driven by cellphone-addicted drivers in places no one should ever have to see or fear them.

The congested roads of the Northeast are the safest when it comes to car travel, while the wide-open highways of Western states are among the most dangerous, according to a national report to be released next month. Massachusetts, deemed the safest state for drivers, averaged 0.8 deaths per 100 million miles traveled last year, compared with a national average of 1.5 deaths, the National Safety Council found.