Keep focus on Rainier connector

With new state funding, long planned roadway can finally be built, if political will is there|

Nearly 14 years after a large majority of Petaluma voters directed city officials to do everything possible to make the long-delayed Rainier crosstown connector and interchange a reality, there is now a strong likelihood that the first segment of the project will be under construction as soon as 2022.

The recent awarding of $85 million in state gas tax funds to widen Highway 101 through central Petaluma has moved this vital, yet long delayed public works project from the hypothetical realm to reality. The highway widening project, expected to get underway next year, will finally allow construction of an underpass extending Rainier Avenue from its terminus near McDowell Boulevard to Petaluma Boulevard North.

Studies have shown that the new road will provide the most efficient, cost-effective solution to relieving traffic along the heavily congested East Washington corridor, enabling motorists to more easily traverse the city. The project’s second phase, a full interchange, promises a convenient alternative for residents throughout the city to access Highway 101 headed north and south.

First planned in 1965, the roadway is included in the city’s General Plan, a guideline for city development that makes certain assumptions about future growth, including that Rainier will one day be built. Petaluma Valley Hospital, the Deer Creek shopping Center, the Petaluma Police station and the Petaluma Outlet mall were all located at either end of the future Rainier extension in anticipation that future drivers would use the road to access those facilities.

But local politicians in the late 1990s, unreasonably fearful that the roadway would open up land for unwanted development, voted to remove Rainier from the General Plan. Until the project was restored by a more pragmatic-thinking city council a few years later, the project lay dead in the water.

In 2004, the long-simmering debate over Rainier was finally put to rest when 72 percent of local voters told city officials to make the construction of the roadway a priority. No other local public improvement project before or since has received such a clear mandate from voters, leading the city to actively pursue the design, funding and construction of the project.

City officials have since taken incremental steps towards realizing this critically important transportation improvement goal, spending millions of dollars on design and environmental studies to ensure that the Rainier Avenue extension project will be ready to go when the highway is widened.

There are certainly more funding challenges ahead for Rainier, but city officials have a plan for that. Once Caltrans finishes widening the highway in 2022 and construction on Rainier can begin in earnest, the city’s traffic impact fees fund, paid for by developers, should contain about half of the estimated $61 million needed to complete the project’s construction.

The remainder of the money is expected to come from the owners of the land alongside the future roadway. Rainier’s construction will open up dozens of acres currently zoned for desperately needed housing in the city’s geographic center, so it’s quite logical to ask the developers of those properties to pay the balance of the roadway’s cost, especially since little can be built there without the road.

Ironically, and to underscore the city’s horrific housing crisis, the area is currently rife with homeless camps. If properly planned, Rainier’s construction could make some of the adjacent properties available for low cost housing development, a much-preferred alternative to homelessness.

Besides funding, the other main challenge is constructing a freeway interchange at Rainier. A major feature of the project, this element was removed after Caltrans revised its standards to not allow interchanges within a mile of another interchange. Rainier’s crossing of Highway 101 is .8-mile from the East Washington Street interchange.

Caltrans could make an exception, but it would take an act of the legislature, meaning much lobbying is needed at the state level.

In the next four years, Petaluma’s elected officials and staff will be making important decisions to bring the city’s top transportation project to fruition. There are no more excuses for inaction. It’s time to build Rainier.

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