New funding eyed to advance Petaluma Hwy. 101 project

Transportation officials are more hopeful than ever about a funding source to complete the Highway 101 widening work from the south end of the city to the county line.|

As one Petaluma highway project wraps up and another ramps up, transportation officials are more hopeful than ever about a funding source to complete the Highway 101 widening work from the south end of the city to the county line.

A rare unified front among North Bay political leaders and heads of regional transportation agencies last week resulted in letters to the head of the California State Transportation Agency requesting $15 million to fund a 5-mile stretch of Highway 101 widening south of the city.

The segment, a significant bottleneck that sees 100,000 cars per day, sits between projects that are about to be completed or just breaking ground. Without the middle piece, officials will be unable to open carpool lanes on the widened sections of highway at the Petaluma River Bridge and the county line.

The letters, signed by leaders including Supervisor David Rabbitt, who is also chairman of the Sonoma County Transportation Authority, and Farhad Mansourian, general manager of Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit, come a month after a dispute among transportation agencies threatened to derail the funding.

The State Transportation Agency is tasked with redistributing $18 million from a now defunct Port Sonoma ferry project, and both SMART and the SCTA have long sought the money.

In May, Mansourian and Golden Gate Transit General Manager Denis Mulligan wrote a letter requesting $12 million to redesign the San Rafael Transit Center, a key project as the commuter rail agency seeks to extend service to Larkspur. But Rabbitt maintained that the bulk of the federal earmark should go to the highway project, a multi-decade effort to widen Highway 101 from Novato to Windsor that has run out of funding as the work reached Petaluma and a stretch known as the Sonoma-Marin Narrows.”

“Looking at the bigger picture, the money should be for the project that is the most impactful,” Rabbitt said. “In my mind, that is The Narrows.”

The latest plan, which has also been endorsed by state leaders including Sen. Lois Wolk, Sen. Mike McGuire, Assemblyman Bill Dodd and Assemblyman Marc Levine, calls for $3.2 million to go toward the SMART transit center project. Rabbitt said that the unity among regional leaders should help secure the funding.

Brian Kelly, the secretary of the State Transportation Agency, is expected to decide on appropriating the funds in September.

“With everyone on the same page, it will make this a lot easier,” Rabbitt said. “The proverbial fighting over the crumbs can be dangerous.”

If the SCTA does secure the $15 million in funding, it will be added to $16 million the agency already has earmarked for the $35 million project. Rabbitt said the final $4 million could come from other agency projects that have been delayed.

The bulk of the construction on the new Petaluma River Bridge has been completed, said James Cameron, director of projects and planning at the SCTA. In July, workers are expected to lay down the final coating of asphalt and remove the barriers in the median.

The completion of the Petaluma River Bridge, the single largest piece of the Highway 101 project, comes as work begins on a new bridge over San Antonio Creek at the county line. The project is expected to take two years and result in a section of highway that his straighter, wider and higher above the creek to avoid flooding.

Cameron said that, if the new funding is awarded, officials could begin building the next project in 2018, just as the San Antonio Creek project finishes. That project could take another two years, meaning the 5-mile stretch of carpool lanes from Lakeville Highway to the county line could open by the end of 2019.

“Without this chunk of money, we would end construction in 2018 without additional carpool lanes,” Cameron said. “People would be very disappointed.”

The final stretch of unwidened highway in Sonoma County, an $85 million project through the heart of Petaluma, remains unfunded.

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

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