Next stage for 101 widening project in Rohnert Park

<p>There will be new southbound offramps in Rohnert Park next week as part of the Highway 101 widening project, the first speed bumps in what so far has been a seemingly hassle-free construction zone.</p><p>“It’s a tricky job, with the traffic volume and being so narrow — two lanes — and raising the whole freeway,” said Darren Kirby, superintendent for Ghilotti Brothers Contractors of San Rafael.</p><p>Next Monday night, the existing Wilfred Avenue offramp will close and a new, temporary one will be constructed just to the south.</p><p>But there’s a wrinkle: that third southbound lane of traffic will now be used solely to exit the freeway, instead of allowing motorists to merge into the two through lanes.</p><p>The existing Rohnert Park Expressway offramp will also be replaced with a temporary offramp.</p><p>Both should be open by 6 a.m. Tuesday.</p><p>It is part of the project that will replace the Wilfred Avenue overpass and widen Highway 101 in Rohnert Park, a $38 million Ghilotti Brothers project that is expected to be completed in August 2012.</p><p>When finished, there will be six lanes of traffic, new on- and offramps and additional cross-town access with the extension of Golf Course Drive to Wilfred Avenue.</p><p>“It’s a classic bottleneck and this will provide congestion relief,” said Seana Gause of the Sonoma County Transportation Authority. “It is one link in the chain.”</p><p>The highway at Wilfred Avenue carries 98,000 southbound vehicles and 108,000 northbound vehicles a day.</p><p>There are a number of Highway 101 projects that are under way or in the final planning stages to eventually widen the freeway and add car-pool lanes all the way from Windsor south to Novato.</p><p>To the north of the Rohnert Park work, freeway widening from Santa Rosa Avenue to Steele Lane in Santa Rosa has been completed.</p><p>The next project to be done will be the seven-mile stretch of freeway from Steele Lane to Windsor-River Road in Windsor, which is now at the halfway point.</p><p>The contractor, O.C. Jones Inc. of Berkeley, expects to have the $77.8 million project completed in the fall of 2010.</p><p>Next in line is the addition of car-pool lanes on Highway 101 from Rohnert Park Expressway to Pepper Road in Petaluma. Bids will be opened Oct. 7 for that segment, estimated to cost $118 million.</p><p>Sonoma County is also in line to get $27 million of $300 million in new federal stimulus funds that are coming to Caltrans, which would widen the freeway from Pepper Road to Petaluma Boulevard North.</p><p>After that, work on the Novato Narrows is scheduled to start in December 2010, using $300 million of local, state and federal funds, with another $446 million still needed.</p><p>The Rohnert Park work has been under way for four months, with a 55 mph speed limit taking effect on Saturday.</p><p>The new offramps will allow the demolition of the existing offramp bridge, which will require Commerce Boulevard to be closed for three days beginning Oct. 6.</p><p>By Christmas, workers expect to have a new bridge constructed and the center of the freeway paved, allowing northbound traffic to be shifted to the center of the freeway.</p><p>In the next stage of construction, the northbound bridge will be replaced and the traffic shifted to it while the new southbound bridge is replaced.</p>