Posted on 10/15/2017 4:16:56 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Highway 37 began life as a private toll road, and was later converted to a state highway. But climate change and sea-level rise will doom the road unless something is done.
For the short term, the ridiculous two-lane section between Sears Point and Vallejo needs to be widened to match the rest of the road, which is four lanes.
Wetlands surrounding the road also need to be restored. It would be reasonable to use some toll money for wetlands restoration, in part to mitigate the effects of construction.
Even with the new funding approved by the Legislature by raising the gas tax, Caltrans has stated that there can be no new construction on Highway 37 until 2088. By then, the road will have sunk beneath the waves.
There are simply too many other major regional priorities, such as Highways 101, 80, 680 and 12 for funding to be available for Highway 37.
There is only one way to relieve the horrendous traffic on Highway 37: converting it to a toll road, and using the money to widen the road.
The toll money would also be available to gradually raise the lowest levels of the road to escape the encroaching San Francisco Bay, and to restore wetlands surrounding the road.
Some have suggested using the recently approved Measure AA money to raise Highway 37. That will do nothing to accomplish the purposes of Measure AA, which is designed to buffer development from sea-level rise by expanding wetlands.
In any case, Measure AA money is hopelessly inadequate to accomplish the major construction needed for Highway 37. It only provides $500 million for the entire San Francisco Bay, and Highway 37 realignment will cost much more than that.
The toll on Highway 37 needs be no higher than the other bay bridges. This will assure that traffic is not diverted to the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. The modest toll on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge certainly has not stopped the commute traffic there.
A joint task force of the four North Bay counties, including Marin, has carefully considered the options for widening the two-lane section, and raising the road to avoid sea-level rise. They have recognized that a toll is a strong possibility to provide the funds necessary for these improvements.
No toll booths would be necessary. The booth-less system now in use on the Golden Gate Bridge would be used for toll collection, and the existing FasTrak responder would be used on Highway 37.
The toll could also be used to create a bike lane (none exists now).
The equity issue of a toll must be addressed. Is it fairer to commuters to spend up to an hour in stalled traffic each day, or to pay a toll to cure the bottleneck between Sears Point and Vallejo and assure that Highway 37 will continue to be usable in the face of sea-level rise?
Today, there is no public transportation at all on Highway 37. The dispersed nature of the Highway 37 commute probably makes conventional public transit impractical. But vanpools subsidized by toll revenue would be a good alternative for those who wish to avoid the toll.
It would be possible for commuters to meet on Mare Island, where plenty of parking is available. They could vanpool to Marin County, and use SMART and other existing public transportation to get to their workplaces, or simply have the van drop them off at work.
While it is not easy to face the costs imposed on society by climate change, burying our heads in the sand is not the answer. The sand will soon be covered by sea water.
Jerry Meral of Inverness is the California Water Program director, Natural Heritage Institute.
They could add more bike lanes or maybe some bullet train tracks. /s
HAHAHAHAHA!
Kalifornia granola munchers whine that they have to drive on a 2-lane road! HAHAHAHA!
The thing is, you can only charge westbound for now, because the competing Richmond-San Rafael bridge charges only westbound. The eastbound lanes are free, to avoid backups, so if you charged tolls eastbound, traffic would divert south to the bridge.
Route 37 also has some at-grade intersections, but it does have 3 short overwater bridges. Just toll each bridge $1.67 westbound, which would in sum equal the $5.00 toll on the Richmond-San Rafael bridge. If the bridge toll is $6.00 during rush hour, make the road tolls $2.00 apiece during rush hour.
Of course, if the voters approve the referendum set by SB 595, you can raise the road tolls to $3.00 apiece, because then the bridge toll would be $9.00.
Maybe someday we could have a ballot measure to extirpate dudes like him that keep pushing these extreme measures that raise and waste multi-billions on phony "water bond" and dishonest parkland and CONservancy schemes in such a blinding (bleep) storm of bizarre baloney (I wish).
” Run the the road off a cliff somewhere.”
LMAO!
I use 37 often... avoids the tolls over bridges
“If you use it, you should pay for the costs. If you don’t use it, you shouldn’t have to pay for it.”
Howze that work with my LARGE property tax bills in Marin related to schools? No kids, not using the schools. Logical idea but not how these CA peeps operate, they’ve NEVER met a tax they won’t vote for.
Like others stated, money HAND OVER FIST coming in ref roads on bridge tolls in.area. Soon they’ll tax the tax.
Thanks for your excellent insight re tolls.
We have used rt 37: 1.5 times in 3 years.
The .5 was last Monday during the fire evac trying to go west. After about 2 hours of bumper to bumper going basically no where, I told my wife it appeared the vehicles in front of us were being forced into a U turn to head back to Vallejo.
Sure enough, without any signs or warnings before we got on the road, they had closed the road westbound at the far west Mare Island exit and forced everyone into a 180 back towards Vallejo. We returned Friday at about noon on 37. It flowed fairly well. However, the road is in terrible shape.
We haven’t had a child in a public school or university for 30+ years.
Our grand kids went to private middle and high schools and now in out of state colleges and the last one will be in one soon. Our state universities/colleges are basically anti any student from California, (another issue)!
In the meantime, we, the California grandparents, parents of the grand kids, uncles, aunts and cousins without kids in school have paid property taxes, bond fees for schools and local colleges, state income taxes and local sales taxes for decades.
Highway 37 was built on swampland. It is always busy and very dangerous. Climate change is not the cause of the problem.
Why?
Wetlands are an "in" thing. They supposedly filter water, and nobody seems to care that they are breeding grounds for disease-carrying mosquitos. Welcome back, malaria!
(Incidentally, my computer's spel checkur doesn't seem to understand the word "mosquito.")
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