State leaders address highway shortfall

A $57 billion, 10-year backlog to fix California’s crumbling transportation infrastructure, which includes the shortfall to widen Highway 101 through Petaluma, will not be solved without a political solution in Sacramento, state transportation officials said.|

A $57 billion, 10-year backlog to fix California’s crumbling transportation infrastructure, which includes the shortfall to widen Highway 101 through Petaluma, will not be solved without a political solution in Sacramento, state transportation officials said last week.

At a town hall meeting in Petaluma on May 12, Malcom Dougherty, the director of Caltrans, told the audience that the gas tax, which has traditionally funded highway maintenance and expansion, is no longer sustainable.

“It’s not a debate about whether or not we need to invest in infrastructure, it’s where are we going to get the funds,” he said.

The meeting, hosted by state Sen. Mike McGuire, Assemblyman Bill Dodd and Supervisor David Rabbitt, came as local transportation officials have struggled to find funding to widen Highway 101 from Petaluma to Novato. The stretch, known as the Sonoma-Marin Narrows, faces a $240 million funding gap.

Rohnert Park City Councilman Jake Mackenzie, a commissioner of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, said a proposal as been floated to raise the gas tax within the nine Bay Area counties. He said that regional transportation agencies should work together, especially in light of a recent $18.2 million earmark that the Sonoma County Transportation Authority and the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit agency have both sought.

“There’s great interest in the earmark money, hence the wee bit of a battle going on,” he said. “For us to punch anything like our weight, we need to work together.”

McGuire said that Gov. Jerry Brown, the Assembly and the Senate are working on legislation that would raise between $3.6 billion and $7 billion annually for transportation projects. Each proposal includes raising the taxes on gas and diesel and indexing them to inflation.

“California is at a point of crisis when it comes to infrastructure,” he said. “We have an opportunity to solve our problems.”

Officials told the audience that the problem is not specific to the state highways. County road networks and city streets are all crumbling due to lack of funding. Rabbitt said that, due to declining gas tax revenue, the county in recent years has had to dip into its general fund to make record investments to pave 300 miles of the 1,380-mile network.

“It’s like turning around a big ship,” he said. “It doesn’t happen overnight. You have to start turning the rudder.”

Dan St. John, Petaluma’s public works director, said the city’s streets are ranked third worst in the Bay Area.

“How do you know you have a road pavement problem? They name a rocky road ice cream after you,” he said, showing a slide of a billboard for Clover Stornetta’s Petaluma Pothole flavor.

(Contact Matt Brown at matt.brown@arguscourier.com.)

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