The sinkhole is about 8x10 ft. SFPD says Lake and 6th Ave. closed 'indefinitely'. We're talking days, not hours. pic.twitter.com/QylBILXVWp

— Ryan Takeo (@RyanTakeoK5) December 3, 2014

A single, gaping pothole can result in hundreds if not thousands of dollars in repairs for a car owner, and thus Trip, a transportation group based in Washington DC, puts effort into tracking the condition of America's major highways and thoroughfares to figure out where infrastructure spending is needed the most. According to their new report, just released, San Francisco and Oakland aren't just among the worst places in the country for poor pavement conditions, we're actually number one. And the top three metro areas of 500,000 people are more with the worst roads are in car-heavy California, with LA ranking number two, and San Jose coming in a close third.

All told, the major roads of SF and Oakland were rated "71% poor," while pothole-filled Los Angeles was found to be only 60%.

As Randy Rentschler of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission tells ABC 7, this makes some sense. "The city of Oakland is an older city, San Francisco is an older city," he says. "All of these roads were built many years ago. They need to be completely repaired, in some cases replaced."

"Major roads" in this case are defined as highways, freeways, and "major arteries" like Van Ness and Sloat Boulevards.

The study found that while annual per-driver costs for road-related vehicle repairs were somewhat higher in Tulsa and Oklahoma City, San Franciscans and Oaklanders are spending an average of $978 a year fixing their cars.

The problems aren't confined just to SF and Oakland either — the study looked at smaller cities too, with populations of 200,000 to 500,000, and both Concord and Antioch landed in the top five there.

And road conditions aren't just important for drivers, since cyclists can be seriously injured by potholes too. An Oakland woman won a $3.25 million judgement against the city after slamming into a pothole in the Oakland Hills in 2011.

In an effort to appear more quality of life-ish, the intersection at Eddy and Taylor received a makeover. (Taylor and Ellis got the same design yesterday too.) This Tenderloin spot, best known for being a crime magnet where you never want to be after the sun goes down or up, got new designs on their crosswalks.

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Potholes have became our big pet peeve lately-- you can’t get anywhere without being jostled in every which way. Every time we drive down Franklin we're afraid we're going to hit a hole and not come up. And trying to avoid them gets dangerous because swerving to avoid them usually involves swerving into other lanes, never a good thing. Seriously, we think everyone in the city could agree that the Streets of San Francisco look like Edward James Olmos' face in HD. And hating on potholes isn’t just for drivers, but bikers too (it, however, appears to be a good thing for lawyers). Anyways, there’s a statistical measuring stick for the condition of the roads here in the city (we believe the formula is miles of road divided by number of potholes times amount of coffee accidentally spilled on people’s laps). In 1998, the city received a score of 78 out of 100. In 2005, the rating dropped to 64 out of 100. The DPW estimates that there’s the equivalent of 2,262 city blocks that need fixing, at an estimated cost of $427 million bucks to fix.

The city's plan is to work on eleven major streets and some smaller, neighborhood streets over the next few years. Those streets planned to be de-holed include Seventh Ave to Lincoln Way, Folsom Street in SOMA, Bush Street, Cesar Chavez, and a bunch of other roads. As any driver knows, that’s only the tip of the iceberg and even the Powers that Be admit that the amount of money being spent won't even be close to fixing what needs. The money will come out of the gasoline tax and not the city budget.

And while they're at it, can somebody please start working on 101? You could build a condo in some of the holes that line that highway.

Photo by geekstinkbreath/Flickr