Mailbag: Tale of 2 Stony Points

As a north-south feeder street, Stony Point Road is a hard working piece of pavement, generating lots of letters and comments from Road Warrior readers. And like many other traffic corridors, it passes through several cities as well as some unicorporated county land, so improving it has been a joint effort.

Sonoma County went first, widening Stony Point south of the Santa Rosa city limits. Santa Rosa is finishing the job in phases, widening the stretch between Sebastopol Road and Highway 12 in 2010. Phase 2 is underway, but not in visible ways. Several businesses have been demolished to make room for the new four-lane road. Now it’s PG&E’s turn to relocate the utilities. Once they’re done (and if $24 million is available), construction will begin in spring 2014 to expand Stony Point to four lanes between Sebastopol Road and Hearn Avenue.

For all the details, read an earlier Road Warrior post here.

The following letters and comment represent the range of opinions.

Dear Road Warrior: I’m so surprised and happy to see the paving work done on Stony Point and Petaluma Hill. Instead of the crap chip-seal and partial shoulder coverage they usually do to save money, this time they did it right. SMOOTH asphalt shoulder edge to shoulder edge. A big thanks to whomever made this happen. Bike friendly, smooth, and quiet. — Dave

Dear Road Warrior: I’ve noticed that the less prosperous areas of Santa Rosa are even worse than other sections. The strip of Stony Point between Hearn Avenue and Sebastopol Road is so bad that it feels as though I’m four-wheeling while driving it (below the speed limit!). It’s terrible! I can only HOPE that the city will delegate some of the road repair funds to that stretch of road. It truly is terrible. They paid to repave my fairly new neighborhood off of Stony Point, but the road at the time was in perfect condition (and I applaud them keeping it that way), but Stony Point was in much greater need! — Selena

Comment, referring to a complaint from a backroad commuter that the Wilfred Avenue traffic light would slow down traffic: I live out here off of Stony Point. My neighbors and I would be happy if more of your kind actually took 101. We’re glad there will be more stop lights so we can actually get in and out of our own driveways. — Been There