County wants to keep $73 million in savings on 101 project

<p>Sonoma County highway planners have asked the state to let them keep the savings from three Highway 101 widening projects that came in under budget and use it for three new projects.</p><p>The savings, $50 million in state funds and $23 million in local sales tax money, would be earmarked to widen another stretch of freeway and rebuild two overpasses, said Suzanne Smith, executive director of the Sonoma County Transportation Authority.</p><p>“This is the first time we have had full funding for these segments in sight,” Smith said. “We are pretty excited about the opportunity to keep the bid savings in the county and in the corridor.”</p><p>The county transportation authority submitted the request to the California Transportation Commission on Thursday.</p><p>The savings are being attributed to the recession. As the economy slowed, contractors consistently bid road projects under what the state Department of Transportation has estimated.</p><p>The difference has saved $50 million in state bond funds in Sonoma County, $100 million in the Bay Area and $600 million statewide.</p><p>“The commission saw this money has accumulated and they want to get it out into projects,” Smith said. “This first round, they said ‘Tell us how you will spend the money, if you can spend it in your corridor.'”</p><p>In Sonoma County, contractors bid a total of $73.4 million under the $328.2 million estimated cost of widening Highway 101 from Santa Rosa to Windsor and from Wilfred Avenue to Pepper Road and a new Wilfred Avenue overpass.</p><p>Of that savings, $50 million is from state Proposition 1B highway bonds and $23 million is from Sonoma County's Measure M quarter-cent sales tax.</p><p>Sonoma County is proposing to use that $73 million toward the $112 million cost of widening Highway 101 from Pepper Road to North Petaluma Boulevard, which could start in October, and rebuilding the overpass there and the overpass at Airport Boulevard.</p><p>The freeway widening would coincide with the completion of the Wilfred overpass project and widening through Rohnert Park and Cotati, Smith said.</p><p>If that is successful, “we will have completed the corridor from Windsor south to Petaluma,” Smith said. “That would just leave the narrows.”</p><p>The widening of the Novato Narrows, the stretch of freeway from Petaluma to Atherton in Marin County, so far has $300 million in funding, but is still $400 million short.</p><p>Since 2001, $262 million has been spent on 14.6 miles from northern Rohnert Park to Windsor. An additional $150 million is going into projects on 6.6 miles of highway from Rohnert Park to Petaluma now under way.</p>