Very expensive Hwy 37 outline gets ball rolling

For many years, Highway 37 was sort of a transportation afterthought. Compared to the bay's other crossings, it was the road less traveled.

Over the past 20 years, reliance on Highway 37, for commuters and commercial traffic, has steadily increased. The daily traffic jam is a testament to that steady growth in the commuters and commerce that rely on the mostly two-lane road that crosses the San Pablo Bay northern mudflats.

Effective response to that increase has been slow in coming.

Worries that the roadbed is slowly sinking brought local and state officials together to seek possible solutions. That concern has grown along with evidence of sea level rise, with experts predicting that much of the 21-mile state highway could regularly be underwater by 2040.

Already portions of the Novato end of the highway have been closed due to flooding from heavy storms.

Highway 37 has slowly jumped to the top of the region's transportation agenda.

For good reason — 40,000 of them.

That's the average daily number of commuters who rely on Highway 37.

Progress toward possible short- and long-term remedies for fixing Highway 37 has reached a political milestone — an agreement on a plan for needed improvements.

The plan includes widening the highway between Sears Point and Mare Island to four lanes and include a carpool lane that would be toll roads. The cost of the project? Estimated at $500 million.

At the same time, the agreement calls for advancing plans to eventually turn Highway 37 into a 21-mile long elevated causeway. But the time that project will take to plan, finance and construct would provide little relief for today's commuters who now lose an hour or more tied up in traffic on the highway.

Any plan also needs to provide more effective flood-control measures on the Novato end of Highway 37. Despite recent preventive work, it flooded and was closed again this winter.

The overall twin-goal plan for the highway's main stretch has been endorsed by Caltrans, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission and the state Department of Natural Resources. Marin lawmakers state Sen. Mike McGuire and Assemblyman Damon Connolly also back the plan as a means for addressing traffic congestion sooner than potentially a lot later.

This political and intergovernmental partnership may be a milestone for moving forward, but it doesn't necessarily mean construction will soon start. It still needs approvals from federal agencies. And Bay Area environmental organizations are not likely going to favor roadbed widening requiring the loss of wetlands that they have been working to reclaim. A lengthy legal battle isn't going to help those stuck in traffic — or the pollution generated by the prolonged traffic jams.

The proposed elevated causeway has drawn support from those groups that see it as a way to reopen the wetlands that are now separated by the highway. While embraced by environmental groups, its biggest hurdle is the estimated $8 billion price tag and the much longer time it could take to ever get built.

At least the agreement should get the ball rolling toward fulfilling a plan that promises progress on both designs.

Further planning and progress will determine whether widening the existing road is an approach that is as practical as it promises and whether it really is a major step in putting stakeholders on the same page when it comes to a plan for relieving traffic congestion and addressing the growing threat of flooding.

It also includes a pledge to continue to work on eventually turning Highway 37 into an elevated causeway.

It is a pact that shows that the future of Highway 37 has become a top priority. But there are a lot of motorists likely waiting to see if politicians and governmental leaders will deliver and wondering how soon they get relief.