More than 1,200 miles of Sonoma County roads would be allowed to fail within 10 years, while 150 miles of heavily traveled roads remain relatively smooth under a maintenance plan to be considered today by the Board of Supervisors.
"Oh great, I can hardly wait for that," Frei Road resident Doris Petro said Monday on learning that her winding west County road will be allowed to crumble and eventually turn from asphalt to gravel.
"This looks like the road to Kandahar," said Lynn Fritz, whose Lynmar Estate winery is on Frei Road.
The county is responsible for public roads that are outside city limits and not designated as state highways.
Despite a six-year record for the worst roads in the Bay Area, Sonoma County has to set hard limits on future maintenance, said Valerie Brown, the board chairwoman.
"We are stuck in a position of priority-setting," she said. "We want to make sure they (road maintenance funds) are utilized on the roadways that take the most traffic."
If the county spread its $4.5 million annual budget for preserving paved roads over the 1,384-mile network of county roads, in 10 years "they would all fail," said Phil Demery, county transportation and public works director.
If pavement preservation - which includes sealing and resurfacing - were limited to 356 miles of major arteries in unincorporated areas, the cost would be $13 million a year, nearly three times the $4.5 million budget, Demery said.
Limiting the work to 150 miles of roads, all of which carry 4,500 vehicles or more per day, brings the cost within the county's financial limit, he said.
"It's a real shame," Demery said, noting that 150 miles amounts to about 11 percent of county roadways.
Funding for county road work comes primarily from state and federal gasoline taxes, currently providing $18 million a year.
Of that amount, the county spends $4.5 million on pavement preservation, Demery said. The rest is spent on "routine road maintenance," which includes filling potholes, clearing brush and repairing bridges and storm drains, he said.
Routine work will continue on all county roads, but pavement preservation will be limited to a list of priority roads, including 15 miles of River Road and 10 miles of both Dry Creek Road and Stony Point Road.
Short stretches also are on the list, including one-third of a mile of Main Street in Penngrove and two-thirds of a mile of the Rohnert Park Expressway.
Potholes are an aggravation to motorists, but filling them is an endless pursuit, officials and residents agree.
"They fill &‘em in and two weeks later they're back," said Petro, who lives on a bend in Frei Road that obscures oncoming traffic.
Exiting her driveway, Petro said, she can't see cars coming around the turn, "but sometimes you can hear then hitting a pothole."
"You get to the point you're almost embarrassed to have people out to our house," Petro said.
Frei Road, used as a shortcut from westbound Guerneville Road to southbound Highway 116, carries about 2,700 vehicles per day.
It is a "good example" of a failed road that still has a "wearing surface," Demery said.
Roads not on the priority list are typically in poor condition now and will fail within 10 years, Demery said. They will remain drivable, and will "feel and look like a loose cobble road," he said.
Eventually, the pavement on failed roads will be pulverized and converted to gravel, he said.
The problem lies in county history, with many rural roads merely paved-over wagon and cattle trails, lacking the base of compacted rock that gives roads strength to carry cars, trucks and buses, Demery said.
Most city roads were built with a suitable base, he said.
Roads in unincorporated Sonoma County were rated worst in the Bay Area this year for the sixth year running, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.
County roadways were rated "poor," scoring 44 on a scale of 100, while the nine cities scored from 55 (which put Petaluma in the "at-risk" category), to scores in the 60s, or "fair," for Healdsburg, Rohnert Park, Sebastopol, Santa Rosa and Cotati, and scores in the 70s, or "good," for Sonoma, Windsor and Cloverdale.
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