Hwy. 101 widening finish just weeks away

The end is in sight for the Highway 101 widening project through downtown Santa Rosa after two years of motorists weaving through temporary lanes and changing their habits to avoid street closures and traffic snarls.

In November, six months ahead of schedule, traffic officials expect that Highway 101 will be opened to six lanes of traffic.

“We are still hoping for mid-November, before the holiday season, and it looks very promising,” said Alicia Sequeira, a Caltrans spokeswoman. “If we can open the carpool lanes in November, that would be tremendous for us.”

Sequeira credits the dry weather and the efforts of the contractors, MCM Construction of Sacramento and Ghilotti Construction of Santa Rosa,

“We have been very fortunate with weather, we didn’t have heavy frost into the spring, we didn’t have heavy rains this year, which in construction for laying asphalt is huge,” Sequeira said. “That allowed us to do a lot throughout this past year.”

The $111.5 million project is the largest ever for Santa Rosa and, despite the impact on city streets, has gone smoothly, city officials said.

“The citizenry have been incredibly patient,” said Jason Nutt, Santa Rosa’s traffic engineer.

“Other state highway projects have resulted in substantial complaints from the public,” Nutt said. “In this case, in talking with Caltrans staff and in comparison to other projects in the Bay Area, we are definitely getting low call volumes.”

The work completes a carpool lane in each direction from Wilfred Avenue in Rohnert Park to Steele Lane.

Next up is the construction of carpool lanes north from Santa Rosa to downtown Windsor, a $120 million projects, and then south to Petaluma, estimated at $205 million.

Both projects are expected to be launched next spring and to be done in 2011, but officials are concerned the state could borrow from those funds to plug its budget deficit, delaying the projects.

The Santa Rosa widening project began in February 2006 with completion expected in April 2009.

The $111.5 million cost was paid for largely by Measure M, the quarter-cent sales tax Sonoma County voters passed in November 2004, with some funds from state Proposition 42, a measure passed in March 2002 that steers gas-tax revenues to local and state transportation projects.

The Santa Rosa project was complicated by the need for new, raised freeway structures along most of its length. They were built of concrete poured into wooden forms, which were then lowered onto the freeway supports.

That caused months-long closings of Third, Fourth, Fifth and Ninth streets and a restricted number of lanes on Steele Lane and College Avenue.

Those streets have reopened and the widening of Steele Lane was completed late last year. College Avenue is expected to be restriped and opened with four lanes plus turn lanes in two weeks, Nutt said.

The final work on the freeway is under way, which has caused the closing this weekend of the Highway 12 ramps to northbound Highway 101.

The work includes the widening of the Highway 12 onramp to northbound Highway 101 and a wider Third Street offramp, creating a longer auxiliary lane and a better merge and weaving patterns, Nutt said.

“We are separating those two merging movements ... we are anticipating this will vastly improve that bottleneck,” Nutt said.

The final work also includes finishing the widening of the eastbound Highway 12 onramp to southbound 101, followed by the final paving of the freeway and ramps, Nutt said.