Posted on 02/13/2019 10:54:45 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Imagine driving along a four-lane elevated causeway above the brackish San Pablo Bay, shaving more than an hour off the normal Highway 37 commute.
Transportation planners have for years envisioned remaking the 20-mile route from Novato to Vallejo into the North Bay’s most important east-west corridor. Now, they are ready to act.
Officials in Marin, Sonoma, Napa and Solano counties have been meeting for several years, pondering solutions to Highway 37’s notorious bottlenecks, where 45,000 cars per day stretch the normal 20-minute commute to as much as 100 minutes. They have also acknowledged that traffic improvements will be irrelevant without addressing sea level rise — without action, the highway will be underwater in 30 years.
The first fixes will be completed within the next seven years, officials say, and a new formal partnership defines the roles various agencies will play and sets the process in motion.
Branded as Resilient State Route 37, the program that includes the transportation agencies of the four counties plus Caltrans and the Bay Area Toll Authority, is planning vast changes to the highway. The Sonoma County Transportation Authority signed onto the partnership on Monday.
“We’re trying to move into the next phase,” said Supervisor David Rabbitt, an SCTA board member. “I think the pace will pick up going forward.”
During the preliminary work, the study group broke the route into three distinct segments: the four-lane flood-prone stretch from Highway 101 to Sears Point; the narrow two-lane stretch from Sears Point to Mare Island that is plagued with congestion and also susceptible to sea level rise; and the four lanes from Mare Island to Highway 80, with bottlenecks and outdated interchanges.
(Excerpt) Read more at northbaybusinessjournal.com ...
Better make it about 5,000 ft in elevation. In case the glaciers melt.
PING!
Maybe all those cars is making it sink
Well, the state can use any of the unspent circus train money as they abandoned that charade this week after consuming billions.
Let me guess, it involves lots of public funds going to pay for union jobs.
“Hey, I know, let’s tie in the new causeway project to Global Climate Change induced sea level rise, and maybe we can get some of that Green New Deal money!”
Right. At the current rate of sea level rise - the one that’s been happening for the last few 100 years - they might have to contend with at maximum ~ 8 inches of water level increase in about 100 years.
Which is of course almost irrelevant. If it even happens.
And anyway, aren’t we all going to be flying to work in automated Personal Air Vehicles in a few years? So who needs bridges? In 2100, we’ll be worried about rampant air-to-air collisions due to crap software builds.
Something needs to be done, the commute can vary from 20 minutes to almost 2 hours of bumper to bumper traffic.
I like the idea of building a bridge from Novato to Vallejo.
This is needed. As they said, the present road will be underwater in a few years anyway.
On a day like today with heavy rain, there will be areas of deep puddling. So it’s almost below water level already in certain spots.
There is an Amusement Park at the end near the city of American Canyon. I think it’s Six Flags Park. They would benefit with a bridge too. Easier access to those coming by bus.
Actually, if the Green Raw Deal passes, the bridge will be for choo-choos, and will also connect the areas where the airports used to be.
Thanks Tol - If you asked me yesterday, I’d tell you that paying for this highway would have been easy since California just freed up about $50 Billion that would have been otherwise wasted on their Train-to-Nowhere. Now they’re walking that back - so this Hwy 37 upgrade is a pipe dream. Maybe sometime after 2033, when they supposedly get their Train-to-Nowhere done.
Oh, why bother? It’s Global Warming.
Maybe all those cars is making it sink
—
I had the same thought.
I like the idea of rail electrification powered by nuclear fission reactor in the north bay. I call this the Green New Deal.
If the road is improved, that would be good as a transition to rails solution. And don’t bother to elevate the highway, — too expensive. Instead consider a four foot sea wall along the new road. (Like a bike path with a sea barrier) I tell you it would be less expensive and work as well.
The road borders the bay all the way, so if the sea rises ( and it will — but I would never bet on the year — too many unknowns. A sea wall is far easier than elevating the highway. Are there other reasons for the highway to be elevated?
A pontoon bridge will solve their faux rising sea problem and probably save a lot of money.
Yes, California had the good sense to quit that, it seems. However, there are various structures for bridges and what not scattered along the way.
Thousands of years from now, the people of that time will look upon these structures, should they still exist, as remnants of a bygone era, when people worshipped the environment and governments, instead of the Lord. And these relics shall be known from then on as . . .
RAILHENGE!!!
So they’re still going to build Railhenge further, then?
Never mind.
Just in time for a Spinal Tap reboot!
It’s almost like an article of faith that sea level rise has to be mentioned anywhere there is water. I have driven on that stretch of road many times. There is water on both sides. It looks the same as it did ten years ago. I doubt if it will be upgraded in the next 30 years and I also don’t think it will be any different from now. I am pretty sure nobody is going to be called out or as they love to say in liberalland held accountable when it doesn’t turn out to be under water. It definitely needs to be widened and raising the grade would be nice and also necessary to support a wider road. But adding sea level rise to the engineering is only going to make it more expensive.
I live at one end of Hwy 37.
Two years ago heavy rains flooded the road for the 1st time in my memory (I’m 67 and have been travelling on the road since I was a kid). The problem was twofold: the roadbed had sunk, and ditches hadn’t been cleaned out in years. Ditches were cleaned out and some new culverts were put in under the road. No problems since.
The daily slowdown comes because half of the route is only one lane in each direction. That part of the road goes across a marsh. The road going from 2 lanes to one creates a back up miles long. Until 20 years ago, it used to be 3 lanes - one lane in each direction and a center passing lane. There were tons of head-on collisions with that system, so now there’s one lane in each direction with a center barricade (and more of a shoulder so many fewer people are driving into the water).
A big impediment to widening that part of the road is that the marsh (or at least parts) is now a protected area. I have no doubt “environmentalists” will protest widening the road. A two-tier road is one option being considered.
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