Opponents of Rainier crossing step up efforts to stymie Petaluma project
As Highway 101 climbs to span what would be Petaluma’s third time-saving route across town, vocal opponents of the long-promised, multi-million dollar east-west connector are once again stepping up efforts to halt the project they say will cost too much and make too little impact.
The push in recent weeks, coming more than 60 years after the crosstown connector at Rainier Avenue was first envisioned in north Petaluma, traces a similar path to that forged more than 20 years ago, when the Petaluma City Council passed a resolution removing the crossing from city plans and priorities.
That’s no coincidence. David Keller, the man who has spent the past several weeks offering up a “template” for killing the project to City Council members and staffers ahead of the city’s latest General Plan update, was on the City Council in 1999 when Rainier was first stricken from the city’s transportation planning efforts.
“I think the entire project, in either configuration, is misleading, does not do what it’s promised to do, and wastes $100 million in local money – develops land that shouldn’t be developed,” Keller said during a recent phone interview, referring to a Rainier project with- or without access to Highway 101.
Keller has a ready audience on today’s City Council, including Mayor Teresa Barrett, who says the project should “absolutely” be removed again, and City Council member Brian Barnacle, who said he’d prefer city staff not spend another minute on the project that has already cost the city more than $10 million.
Others, though, see the latest salvo in the long-running battle as coming at the wrong time, and without well-planned alternatives for relieving longstanding congestion problems in Sonoma County’s second largest city.
“I think the timing is curious,” said City Council member Mike Healy, pointing to the city’s ongoing work to revise the 2008 General Plan. “If you were to arbitrarily start canceling traffic projects, it could blow up the current (General Plan).”
The fraught fight over Rainier pits dueling visions for the city’s future. Progressive environmentalists see bikes and buses as fulcrums to soaring quality of life and reduced traffic, and view Rainier, in Keller’s words, as a “40-year solution to a 70-year problem.” More moderate, development-friendly politicos see an east side already etched in stone, and in need of practical, car-centric solutions to existing problems.
Estimates of the cost to finish Rainier vary widely, from Keller’s $100 million mark, to the city’s most recent estimate of $80 million, to calculations that could cut the cost in half pending major adjustments to the plan. But the impact of the Rainier fight, at least politically, can’t be overstated.
“Every year’s an election year when it comes to Rainier,” said Keller, weighing in on whether the coming district elections could ease debate surrounding the project. “Rainier is – it’s kind of one of those things…It’s always been a political issue.”
Any attempt to re-direct city efforts on the project likely won’t start until a City Council workshop on crosstown connectors tentatively planned for late this summer.
Petaluma has already spent $10.9 million toward making Rainier a reality, including $7 million on contracts to construct the undercrossing of Highway 101.
The city has also put away about $30 million in developer fees that could be used toward construction of the Rainier connector, but Barrett and others see little path forward to raising the rest of the needed money. And, even if that money materialized – all of these decades later – the latest studies show that a Rainier connector, without on- and off-ramps to Highway 101, would save just 12 seconds for cross-town traffic on Washington Street and Corona Road. For Rainier opponents, that’s just not good enough.
“There’s a cliché that we might want to think about, and that is, ‘Don’t throw good money after bad,’” Barrett said. “Or, if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. At some point, you have to realize that what we’ve been talking about is not achievable. And were it achievable – the building of a connector at Rainier – it may not get what it was promised to deliver.”
That promise alone is responsible for the location of the hospital, the police station and the Santa Rosa Junior College Petaluma campus, but where proponents see inevitability, Rainier opponents see a chance to change course.
Keller, for example, envisions sports fields on land west of Highway 101 that could reduce trips to the east side, and reduce traffic. And he sees investments in buses, bicycle lanes and pedestrian safety and access measures as a much smarter way to spend $100 million – while still improving traffic congestion.
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