Sonoma County's bumpy path to smooth streets

Roads in unincorporated Sonoma County were rated by regional transit planners as the bone-jarring worst of all Bay Area cities and counties for the fourth straight year.

Several local cities did considerably better in the annual ranking.

Sonoma, for example, scored a "very good" 80 on a scale of 100, the best in the county, followed by Windsor and Cloverdale, which got scores in the "good category" of 74 and 72, respectively.

Petaluma was the county's lowest-scoring city, just barely qualifying for a "fair" rating with a score of 60, but that is far ahead of where the city was a decade ago, when its streets got a score of 41.

"Petaluma is actually a bit of a success story," said John Goodwin, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. "It was not long ago Petaluma was the runt of the litter for the Bay Area. Petaluma made a concerted effort to bring its roads up to snuff. It was a clear civic priority."

The MTC released the ratings late Tuesday, based on reports by cities and counties using the transportation agency's Street Saver software.

"It is an important performance index for us. The road system is the largest publicly owned asset and we need to make sure we preserve its quality," said Phil Demery, Sonoma County's new public works director, who said he was hired this year to improve the county's rating.

The 2,718 miles of unincorporated roads rated 44 for 2006, the lowest score of any city or county in the Bay Area, a distinction that Sonoma County has held for four years.

"There's potholes that you and I can go fishing in," said Kevin O'Connell, who lives on Freezeout Road in Duncans Mills. He said the road has damaged wheels, windshields and suspensions over the years.

Sonoma County rates low because much of its road network is two-lane, rural and susceptible to damage from rain and storms, officials said.

"We are a very large rural county. We have more miles of two-lane rural road than anyone in the Bay Area," said Supervisor Mike Reilly, whose district encompasses 42 percent of Sonoma County's roads. "Many of those roads came into being as logging roads and wagon trail tracks that someone put asphalt on without ever putting a base under."

Reilly said since rebuilding a road is expensive -- $1.5 million a mile -- there is only so much the county can do.

"I have a road in Jenner that slumped and slid in, but the fix on that is $200,000 to $300,000 we don't have for a neighborhood road," Reilly said.

"We had a major contingent from Joy Road in Occidental with chapter and verse about how bad that road is," he said. "Our guys were able to get out there and take care of the worst, but they are saying 'rebuild our road.' "

Demery said the county has $20 million a year for all road work, including maintaining the surface and drainage, clearing vegetation and addressing water quality.

There is $4 million now that goes directly to road surface maintenance, but Demery said the county plans to divert more to road surface work.

The county also has undertaken a study of how to prioritize its road maintenance.

Demery said he expects improvements will take time.

In Santa Barbara, where he was public works director, it took from 1994 to 2007 to increase the index from 46 to 70.

Santa Rosa rates right at the average for the Bay Area with a ranking of 64, which Mayor Bob Blanchard said is a function of the amount of money put into maintenance of its 1,082 miles of road.

"It's not OK, but it is the best we can do given our financial situation," Blanchard said. "We need $12 million a year to maintain our capital investment in our streets, and we are putting in $7 million and that is the best we can do."

Sonoma, with 67 miles of road, had one of the top ratings in the Bay Area, sharing the "very good" category with only 10 other cities and Contra Costa County.

Part of it is the result of a $6 million sewer pipe replacement and street paving project that covered 40 percent of the city's streets two years ago, Public Works Director Brian Little said.

"It is important in a small town and in a touristy town," Sonoma Mayor Stanley Cohen said. "It makes the town look good . . . It is part of what you have to do."

You can reach Staff Writer Bob Norberg at 521-5206 or bob.norberg@

pressdemocrat.com.