Petaluma-Sebastopol bike path study gets rolling

A quarter-million dollar study to iron out the details of a proposed bicycle and pedestrian pathway roughly following an old railway between Petaluma and Sebastopol is set to kick off in the next few months, following a key vote by the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors this month.

The project is likely to involve the most complex property puzzle in Sonoma County’s current and proposed regional trail network, which includes popular routes like the 14-mile West County and Joe Rodota trails between Santa Rosa and Forestville. While old railways are often a go-to alignment for such projects - they are not just largely flat, they are also frequently under public or single ownership - the 13-mile Petaluma-Sebastopol Trail will traverse a corridor west of Highway 101 that has been divided among a variety of private property owners.

“Here, the majority is in private ownership, so the likelihood of using that railway is pretty much impossible,” said Ken Tam, a planner with Sonoma County Regional Parks, which is heading up the project. “This study will identify a feasible alignment.”

The Board of Supervisors last week took a final vote that cleared the way for a $209,436 California Department of Transportation grant to help fund the study, which will cost a total of $248,000 including local funds. The project itself could cost around $4.5 million, according to an early estimate in the county’s 2020 capital projects plan.

The study is expected to be completed by February 2018, with public meetings to be scheduled at a later date, Tam said.

Last week’s vote was a necessary procedural step that formally designated Regional Parks as the lead for the Caltrans Sustainable Transportation Planning Grant, which was awarded in April 2015. Additional funding included $15,000 from the county, $6,500 from the city of Sebastopol and $1,000 from the city of Petaluma, along with a $11,000 donation from the Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition and $5,000 from the Santa Rosa Cycling Club.

The trail would have ends near the Petaluma KOA and Sebastopol’s Bloomfield Road. The exact alignment between those points, currently under study, is expected to be within an area approximately two miles southwest of Stony Point Road and Highway 116.

“We’d all love to see it happen,” said Melissa Hatheway, chair of the Petaluma Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee.

If built, the Petaluma-Sebastopol Trail would be the latest pathway to follow the corridor of the old Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railroad, an electric railway that provided passenger trolley service between Petaluma, Sebastopol, Forestville and Santa Rosa until the mid-1930s. Portions of the former line can still be seen along Petaluma’s Water Street, with a terminus at 215 Weller Street that connected to a railway-owned San Francisco ferry service.

Northwestern Pacific Railroad acquired the Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railroad around 1930, and gradually sold off unused portions of the railway over several decades. Sonoma County was able to acquire some of those portions to build the Joe Rodota and West County trails, now a popular route for recreation and transportation between western Sonoma County and Santa Rosa.

The project will launch as Regional Parks gets close to wrapping up a similar study for a proposed 13-mile pathway between Santa Rosa and Sonoma. The two projects have a number of key differences, Tam noted. The proposed Sonoma Valley Trail is envisioned to largely follow the publicly-owned corridor along Highway 12, a sometimes hair-raising route that is nonetheless already popular with cyclists.

The Petaluma-Sebastopol Trail, meanwhile, would navigate a patchwork of private lands representing a variety of individual interests along a route that has never before been open for bicycle or pedestrian use. Planners will hold at least three public workshops in the coming years as they seek to gauge public interest and determine a trail alignment that is acceptable to landowners.

“The most important part is setting up public workshops to get input from the community in that area,” Tam said.

Some landowners have already begun to raise concern over privacy and security issues that could stem from the new public pathway, said Supervisor David Rabbitt, whose district includes much of the project area. While existing pathways like the Joe Rodota are popular with a diverse group of users, they have also attracted homeless encampments and been the setting for various crimes over the years.

Rabbitt cited the multi-year study as evidence of the county’s commitment to working with property owners on an alignment that struck the right balance, and said there was no interest in forcing a particular route using eminent domain.

“We want to rally the troops, including the neighbors,” he said.

While generally supportive of the project, the supervisor also suggested an alternative that could instead use the planned mixed-use pathway along the Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit corridor and a new separated pathway along Highway 116.

“I just want them, when they’re looking at alternatives and see something that could work,” he said.

The 2010 Sonoma County Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan proposes 203 miles of separated pathways, with the Petaluma-Sebastopol Trail being the final pathway to be authorized for study.

“We’re trying to create a more regional system,” Tam said.