Money scarce for Highway 116 safety fixes

County officials said Monday they will try to find money to begin making safety changes at three Highway 116 intersections, including one where a mother of three was killed October in an crash.

But speaking after a meeting held in Cotati with Caltrans, they sought to tamp expectations, saying it won't be easy.

"There are a whole lot of financial hurdles," said Cotati Councilwoman Pat Gilardi, from the beleaguered state budget to the struggling economy.

Spurred by the Oct. 16 death of Maria Juana Flores, whose car was pushed into a big rig's path while she waited to make a left turn off the highway, Gilardi and others had said they would try and convince Caltrans to identity the intersection with Madrone Avenue as a priority safety project.

But Caltrans engineers on Monday told them there hadn't been enough crashes at the intersection to justify that - meaning that all of Highway 116 from Cotati to Sebastopol will remain classified as a rehabilitation project, as it has been since 1999.

Instead, the agency and county will try to approach the changes piecemeal, said County Superviser Mike Kerns whose district includes the fatal crash site as well as much of Highway 116 between Cotati and Sebastopol.

"What we're going to do is try and get some funding for at least the design phase and then start looking for construction funding," said Kerns, a director of the county's transportation authority, which organized Monday's the meeting.

He said Highway 116 intersections that seem most important are at Madrone Avenue and farther west at Hessel Road and Lone Pine Road.

One option that Caltrans is exploring, he said, is installing traffic signals at the highway intersections at Hessel and Lone Pine roads, as well as additional street lighting at Llano Road.

As for the Madrone Avenue intersection, which is just inside the Cotati city limits, Gilardi said there may be other options. One involves the nearby, unfinished Cotati Commons/Marketplace development - home to the Lowe's home improvement store.

Gilardi said mitigation measures tied to work on the Commons project that has yet to be started - multiple retail units and some housing - include a left turn lane at the Madrone Avenue intersection.

Whether that improvement can be made before the second phase of the development starts, is "part of what we're trying to explore," she said. "But again, the question is, where is there money?"