The Bypass and Traffic Circulation

By Ron Orenstein

The Bypass has long been a contentious issue in Willits, but I believe that we can take what we have to develop a comprehensive plan to move traffic and people around town.

There is an effort to reallocate STIP funds from the bypass to a local, in-town project; specifically, building an alternate route through the Baechtel Road/Railroad Avenue corridor. I support this, but there are certain constraints to doing this: · There is the matter of acquiring the right of way for the property between Baechtel Road and Railroad Avenue. The property in question is owned by two people, one who was not willing to even consider selling a right of way to the city, the last time she was approached. Before moving forward, the land owners need to be approached again, to determine if they are willing to sell, and if so, for how much. · The STIP funds consists of about $17 million that remains in the MCOG fund, money that had been dedicated by MCOG to help pay for the bypass. Part of the original funding has already been used to buy property for the bypass right of way. The STIP money had been allocated over several funding cycles to be used by MCOG to distribute to the cities and to the county for use in transportation improvement projects that these jurisdictions would want to do. Several years ago, the MCOG members voted to allocate all of the funds for the next few cycles exclusively to the bypass project, with the understanding that they would not receive any STIP funds for several years. In other words, the $17 million doesn't belong exclusively to Willits; it belongs to all of the jurisdictions in the county. So when we talk about releasing the money from the bypass project to be used locally, we need to remember that we must convince the other jurisdictions in the county that they should give up their share so we can build our project. That might not be an easy sale; not impossible, but not easy!

I believe that we need to be pro-active, but still avoid the perception that we are slightly arrogant. We mustn't make the assumption that everyone, the property owners and the other MCOG members, are as eager as we are to build the Baechtel Road/Railroad Avenue project! The plan needs to be dialed back a bit, while we ask nicely for the cooperation of all of the parties involved.

Here's how I see it playing out: · We should certainly approach the other jurisdictions in the county to see if they are willing to give up the $17 million, or even part of it. We may need to do some horse-trading. · We need to approach the property owners to see if they are willing to sell, and for how much. Once we know how much money we can get from MCOG, we'll have a clearer picture of where we stand. · Even though the Railroad Avenue project has been sort of designed, it is nowhere near "shovel-ready", and much work still needs to be done to design it and to find out how much it would cost to build it. We must also understand that whatever amount of money we can recover from the bypass project, it probably won't be enough to fund the building of the entire Railroad Avenue project as it was envisioned in the 2003 study. The best that we can hope for will be to build a simple two-lane road through the property between Baechtel Road and Railroad Avenue. And that would be good enough for our purposes. If there was enough money to pave all or part of Railroad Avenue, so much the better! · This new roadway would be intended only as an alternate route for us locals to use, to avoid having to drive through downtown on Main Street, and not as any sort of bypass for truck traffic. Trucks can't navigate around Railroad Avenue, especially where it makes the dogleg at East Valley Road to Madden Lane. · I believe that we still need to work with Caltrans to build a bypass at some point, along the footprint that they have laid out, but with some changes:
- We have recently learned that Caltrans doesn't always get what they want! CTC put a restriction on them getting the funding, and The Corps of Engineers told Caltrans that they were too little, too late, denying them the permit that would have released the funding. I believe that we have also discovered that we can't be pushed around, when the city refused to sign the Relinquishment Agreement that Caltrans insisted that we sign in June - and they blinked first! And guess what, the sky didn't fall down on us!
- I believe that we need to capitalize on our newfound clout, and the fact that Caltrans is not the Irresistible Force that we always thought they were. I think that the time is right for us to work with Caltrans to get something built, but with more of what we want and need, not just their vision!
- Despite what I may have said in the past, I believe that a two-lane configuration would be sufficient for their needs; that means a real two lane, not half of a four lane. It needs to be designed to reflect what a two lane road should look like. Besides, I believe CTC already told Caltrans that future funding to complete Phase II probably wouldn't happen.
- Because it would be a relatively slower speed limit roadway, it might be possible to nudge the roadway a little to the East, where it passes over the Waste Treatment plant.
- We need to use most of what they have already designed in order to save time and money, as well as being reasonable. If we get too demanding, we will wind up getting nothing.

I believe that we can still salvage a truck route around the outside of town, as well as creating another route for us to navigate quickly and easily through town, but we need to be focused and intelligent in our approach.

But as part of a larger vision, I propose the creation of a working committee, based on the model of One-Town-One-Vision, with the mandate to do a comprehensive study of all of the options to improving traffic and people circulation in town. One area to explore is a light rail system on the East side of town, using existing tracks.

I believe that together, we can devise a plan to solve all of our circulation problems.