Major fixes for addressing traffic, sea level rise on Highway 37 identified

The North Bay Business Journal ^ | February 11, 2019 | Matt Brown

[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and also susceptible to sea level rise; and the four lanes from Mare Island to Highway 80, with bottlenecks and outdated interchanges.

[Mr. Jeeves]

Nobody in Marin County really wants to make it easier for Vallejo residents to get there. :)

[Political Junkie Too]

And then one year after it's completed, they'll discover that it's sinking into the marsh.

The Millennium Tower is leaning, the new Bay Bridge span is cracking, and this new road will start sinking.

-PJ

[NativeSon]

Hey, why don’t they build a new system of rails & trains!?

[Kipp]

***Nobody in Marin County really wants to make it easier for Vallejo residents to get there. :)***

True. That's one of the reasons Marin isn't part of the BART system - the bond wasn't expected to pass because Marin sentiment was they didn't want the riff-raff to have easy access.

I know people who live in the first housing areas across 37 from Vallejo. Thieves come across the bridge, get off at the first exit, hit a couple of houses, and get back on the road to Vallejo. A year or two ago the neighborhoods put up cameras, so most of the thieves are now getting caught (and many are from Vallejo).

[Kipp]

And then one year after it's completed, they'll discover that it's sinking into the marsh. The Millennium Tower is leaning, the new Bay Bridge span is cracking, and this new road will start sinking.

I wouldn't be surprised.

Don't forget the new $2 billion San Francisco Transbay Terminal. Opened for a couple of weeks, then structural flaws found. Shut down for four months so far. Maybe will open in June.

And last week the Richmond Bay Bridge was shut down for 12+ hours when football-sized chunks of concrete fell from the top deck to the roadway below.

But, despite deteriorating roadways and bridges, California has plenty of money to spend on services for illegal immigrants.