Sonoma County will spend $10M on roadwork around Petaluma

Petalumans looking to escape coronavirus-era isolation will find themselves surrounded – this summer and next – by roadwork as pavement programs meant to repair some of the worst roads in the Bay Area see an influx of millions of dollars.

The latest road-related salvo came last week, when Sonoma County supervisors approved a two-year plan that will funnel $10.1 million to nearly 7 miles of road projects on Petaluma’s rural outskirts, including highly visible work on East Washington Street and Western Avenue.

Combined with Petaluma officials’ promise to leverage $40 million in bonds for major infrastructure work in the coming years, and looming plans for rebuilding North McDowell Boulevard and sealing a host of roadways throughout the city, there will be no shortage of orange cones dotting the landscape in and around Sonoma County’s second-largest city.

With projects piling up in the city and county, including ongoing Highway 101 widening, Sonoma County Supervisor David Rabbitt expressed a hopeful giddiness at the amount of work being done to county roads.

“A couple of years ago, we were paving so many roads it was difficult to get enough asphalt into the county,” said Rabbitt, who represents the south county, including Petaluma. “I couldn’t be happier if that’s a problem going forward.”

Bolstered by $20 million in PG&E settlement money related to the deadly 2017 wildfires, Sonoma County will spend $60 million repairing rural roadways from July 1 to the summer of 2023, according to a plan approved by County Supervisors May 25.

The other $40 million is part of the county’s nearly decade-long Pavement Preservation Program, which leverages a variety of funding sources, including millions from the county’s general fund to repair roadways long known to be the worst in the Bay Area.

Since 2012, when Rabbitt helped launch the effort, the county has spent $120 million to address 433 miles of roadway – about 32% of the county’s 1,369 miles of road.

“A lot of it is, quite honestly, to keep plugging away,” Rabbitt said of the work, which requires significantly more investment in Sonoma County than in neighboring counties such as Napa, Marin and Solano, each of which have fewer than 650 miles of roads countywide.

Map: Sonoma County Pavement Preservation Program

The two-year program will bring roadwork to nearly all sides of Petaluma. On the west side, crews will pave a half mile of Western Avenue, from Cleveland Avenue to the Petaluma City limits, as well as a mile-long portion of Lohrman Lane, from Bodega Avenue to Magnolia Avenue.

On the north side, nearly a mile and a half of Kennedy Road, from Sanders Road to Bloomfield, will be repaved, as well as several sections of Blank Road.

A quarter-mile stretch of East Washington Street from the Petaluma City limits to Old Adobe Road highlights east side repairs.

PG&E-funded work centers on damage to roads near the Petaluma Landfill, which took on heavy truck traffic from debris haulers and home builders in the wake of the 2017 wildfires.

About $3.6 million was set aside for Petaluma-area paving projects, including a 1-mile stretch Bloomfield Road and a 1.5-mile segment of Fallon Road.

Tyler Silvy is editor of the Petaluma Argus-Courier. Reach him at tyler.silvy@arguscourier.com, 707-776-8458, or @tylersilvy on Twitter.