What's happening with the Caltrans Sustainable Transportation Planning Grant?
Sebastopol is reimagining its downtown—again
Maybe the sixth time will be the charm.
After a half-century of studies about Sebastopol’s maddening traffic patterns, the city of Sebastopol is once again collecting public input on how to make the town’s downtown streets more friendly to bicycles and pedestrians while also hoping to calm car traffic and boost business vitality.
This may sound like yet another attempt to “reimagine” Sebastopol’s downtown core, but none of the past studies has had the backing of Caltrans, which effectively “owns” Highways 12 and 116, the town’s main thoroughfares. This new study is funded by a $260,000 Caltrans Sustainable Transportation Planning Grant that the city of Sebastopol won in 2023—one of 90 such grants awarded to local governments and native tribes in that year.
The study was launched last year and has included a series of citizen input opportunities, with more to follow throughout 2025. A final report and a “top three” list of new downtown traffic projects are set to be finalized by the city council. Caltrans officials must also sign off on the chosen projects.
One of the proposed projects will include a new two-way traffic alignment for the downtown core, which is currently predominantly one-way streets. Another final option will retain the one-way pattern with some new enhancements.
Since the days of horse-and-buggy and electric railroads, Sebastopol has endured a mix of traffic and transportation blessings and curses. The intersection of the two main highways has marked Sebastopol as western Sonoma County’s largest marketplace and the gateway to the Bodega coast and the Russian River region. The blessings have come from generations of regional and hometown commerce, community gatherings and events, visitors and ongoing civic improvements. The accompanying curses have included traffic congestion, parking issues and pedestrian safety and accessibility.
The Caltrans Sustainable Transportation Grant seeks to address the full gamut of these issues. The grant is part of a new “Caltrans Main Street, California” initiative, focusing on “people-centered Main Streets that are also state highways.” The Caltrans goal is to “inspire discussions that lead to collaboration, creative problem-solving and a shared vision,” said Donna Berry, a chief engineer with Caltrans.
“We have an opportunity to really examine our small town that is constrained by two state highways passing through it,” said John Jay, associate planner for the city of Sebastopol. Jay commended Caltrans for supporting the study and working as technical partners during the planning process. “If Caltrans didn’t care it would be a big disservice,” he said.
The guiding objectives of the “Reimagining Sebastopol’s Core,” as the Caltrans grant is being nicknamed, include enhancing multimodal safety and accessibility, including bicycles, walking and transit; reducing greenhouse gas emissions; reducing negative impacts of regional “through traffic” and truck traffic; enhancing the downtown business environment; coordinating plans with the county and Caltrans on regional traffic circulation; engaging disadvantaged citizens in the planning process; and, developing a set of concept-level design plans that can be used to pursue grant funding to complete design and construction.
The city hired consultants Fehr & Peers to undertake the study, which has included multiple community outreach efforts. A hundred people attended a workshop session at Sebastopol Center for the Arts on Nov. 14, and an online survey, which closed on Dec. 31, collected around 200 citizen responses.
“What caught my eye [on Nov. 14] were responses about wider sidewalks to allow for more outdoor dining and more expansive store entrances and displays,” Jay said. He said that was part of other comments focusing on improved pedestrian safety and access. Participants also attached supportive “Post-Its” on wall charts favoring slower speed limits, fewer trucks, and the closing of Main Street between Safeway and Burnett Street to all vehicle traffic. Jay said the pedestrian mall concept would get further study.
Jay also noted with surprise that “parking drew very few comments.”
Jay and Fehr & Peers consultant Geoff Rubendall said the Nov. 14 attendees seemed almost equally split over favoring a one-way or two-way downtown traffic configuration.
“Both can happen in a way that can be safe and minimize traffic conflicts,” said Rubendall. He said Caltrans engineering specifications and the grant objectives will require any final projects to “advance safety and improve access and connectivity.” He said part of the study scope is to examine other California small towns with intersecting state highways that have encountered similar street and traffic patterns.
Sebastopol voters passed a referendum to adopt the current one-way street patterns of Main Street and Petaluma Avenue in 1983. Jay said the plan could be worth re-examining.
“That was light years ago, essentially,” he said. “It was almost pre-seatbelt days.”
A history of studies that have gone nowhere
As we mentioned above, this isn’t the first study to take on the challenge of what to do with Sebastopol’s downtown core. Sebastopol’s downtown traffic problems also have been the subject of studies by a 1990 city-council directed Sebastopol Downtown Study; a 2012 Core Project study, led by the Redwood Empire Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA); a 2013 SDAT (Sustainable Design Assessment Team) study, led by a visiting team of professional AIA architects; and a 2016 Caltrans study of Highway 116 where the Caltrans engineers repeatedly recommended a return to a two-way street system for downtown Sebastopol.
Many of these studies included point-in-time traffic counts, recording total daily vehicle trips to and through the city’s main intersections along Highways 12 and 116. In all the studies, spanning at least 40 years, the daily traffic counts have been virtually the same, counting between 10,000 to 12,000 daily trips.
Asked why this traffic count has been so consistent, city planner John Jay answered, “because that’s how long our streets have been at capacity. We can’t fit any more cars, really.”
Which raises the specter of the idea that won’t die: a downtown bypass.
Long ago, before modern urban planning, mandatory local General Plans and environmental laws like California’s CEQA, a group of Sebastopol business owners and civic leaders put forward a permanent solution to the town’s traffic congestion problems. They sought to fully drain the Laguna de Santa Rosa and pave it over to create a four-lane bypass around the downtown’s merchant district.
That idea died a merciful death, but the local demand for a Sebastopol bypass is still alive today. When consultant Geoff Rubendall spoke recently to the Rotary Club of Sebastopol about the current Caltrans-funded study, the topic of a bypass was the most popular question.
The County of Sonoma completed a study in 1958 that recommended a north-south bypass east of Sebastopol (and east of the Laguna.) The plan mapped out three alternative routes that never got built due to funding shortages and complications of acquiring necessary right-of-ways.
Another bypass study was completed in 1990 by the Sonoma County Transportation Authority (SCTA) that proposed extending Llano Road north of Highway 12 and connecting to Occidental Road. That project still exists in a long-term capital project list that SCTA updates every year. It appears on the next-to-last page of the list, which means it’s unlikely ever to get done.
Why this newest study might be different from the rest
After all their community outreach sessions are done, Fehr & Peers will create a report, outlining three possible options for redesigning downtown. The city council will consider those in November of this year. After that, Caltrans technical staff will include some basic engineering details so estimated costs and timelines can begin to be outlined, Rubendall said.
“We will be able to identify outside grant opportunities from the state, federal sources and elsewhere,” said Rubendall. “We’ll also be able to capture some of the ongoing maintenance costs and will have a set of guiding documents for whatever ultimate project is chosen.”
Caltrans Sustainable Transportation Planning Grant is step one of a two-step process. The first step involves collaborating with the local community and developing options. The city council will ultimately decide which option to move forward with. The second step is for the city to use that approved plan as part of a future application to Caltrans (or others) for project construction funding.
“This timeline could be a 10- to 20-year process,” Rubendall said.
 | A guest post by
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I am all in favor of civic improvement, and I believe in the value of government inspired or led movements to improve our society, but this venture, in the absence of any strongly felt need (and I haven't detected any in Sebastopol in the past 25+ years), and considering the shaky state of California state finances, seems unwise. To paraphrase what Senator Everett Dirksen said about government spending some 70 (?) years ago, "a quarter million here, a quarter million there, and pretty soon we're talking about real money"