Petaluma roads second worst in Bay Area

Petaluma drivers take heart - at least you’re not bumping along in Larkspur.

In an annual ranking of Bay Area roads, Petaluma’s pavement was rated second-worst, besting only its Marin County neighbor.

But don’t get too happy. The streets of Sonoma County as a whole ranked last in comparison to the region’s other eight counties.

“The roads are terrible,” said John Rathe, general manager of Dave’s Auto Repair in Petaluma, where customers complain about bone-jarring ruts that blow out tires and tweak alignments. “It’s getting so bad, it’s funny. People are saying, ‘I can’t believe it.’ ”

Potholes and crumbling asphalt abound in Sonoma County and Petaluma, perennial losers in the annual study released Thursday by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the transportation planning, financing and coordinating agency for the Bay Area.

The study ranks the roads in the nine Bay Area counties - San Francisco, Marin, Sonoma, Napa, Solano, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Santa Clara - and the region’s 101 cities by using a variety of criteria including pavement age, climate and precipitation, traffic loads and available maintenance funding.

For 2015, the agency examined 43,000 lane-miles (one lane, one mile long) and assigned a “pavement condition index” of 0-100 points based on certain criteria.

The nine-county Bay Area average was 67, up from 66 a year earlier. Sonoma County, with a combined total of nearly 5,000 miles of roads, got a 55, also a one-point improvement from the previous year.

“We’re looking at widespread mediocrity all around the Bay Area,” said MTC spokesman John Goodman said.

Suburban East Bay and Peninsula cities had the best ratings. Dublin and Brentwood were tied at the top with 85.

Windsor had the best roads in Sonoma County at 73, followed by Sonoma and Rohnert Park. Santa Rosa received a 61, considered “fair,” and Sebastopol got a 60.

Petaluma had a 46, up from 45 the previous year. Larkspur was dead last with a 39 rating.

The 2,700 lane-miles in unincorporated Sonoma County were particularly bad, earning a 47 - the third-lowest in quality compared to all cities and counties, behind Vallejo.

Local transportation officials said the county suffers from a relatively vast network of roads but fewer state repair dollars, which are drawn from gas tax funds and allocated based on registered vehicles in the county.

Contra Costa County, for example, has less than half the miles but twice the population, generating more dollars per mile, said Susan Klassen, Sonoma County’s director of transportation and public works.

Unincorporated Contra Costa County received a “good” rating of 69 points. Four of its cities were in the top 10.

“We don’t get the gas tax funds that they do,” Klassen said. “That’s why it’s been such a struggle to find money to maintain roads.”

However, she said, in recognition of the problem, the Board of Supervisors has allocated more general fund money to road maintenance than any other county in the state over the past two years.

“They recognize the issue and are doing their utmost to address it,” Klassen said.

You can reach Staff Writer Paul Payne at 568-5312 or paul.payne@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @ppayne.