Bennett Valley Traffic Increases are on the Horizon
by Chris Gralapp, BVCA Board
One thousand new residential units in Glen Ellen? How will this impact Bennett Valley?
Currently, Bennett Valley Road is already a busy conduit between Glen Ellen and Santa Rosa, and is becoming busier every year. Since 2020, numerous accidents have happened on this, our main transit artery. Drivers in a hurry feel at liberty to speed, without care or concern given to the tortuous nature of the road system here.
Imagine traffic escalating exponentially by the proposed development at the Sonoma Developmental Center (or Eldridge, as we called it growing up) in Glen Ellen. It will affect us all—because of more commuters traveling to Santa Rosa for work, but also legions of construction crews and equipment trying to circumvent the Highway 12 bottlenecks, and using Bennett Valley as a shortcut. It may eventually trigger installation of traffic lights at several intersections, such as Grange Road and Sonoma Mountain Road.
Permit Sonoma itself has declared that massively increased traffic is “a significant and unavoidable impact” of this development. The county has embraced this expanded plan in its Draft Environmental Impact Report issued in late August.
The best way to reduce impacts is to adopt a smaller project. The “Historic Preservation Alternative” is the smallest alternative, with 450 homes. This smaller, more reasonable footprint would also allow more open space, and allow for wildlife movement, and reduced wildfire risk.
What you can do:
An excellent website for more information and calls to action is: https://eldridgeforall.org/
The Draft Environmental Impact Report for SDC can be found here: https://www.sdcspecificplan.com/documents
Public comments will be accepted until September 23—I urge all to contribute your opinions about this to Brian Oh at Permit Sonoma: Brian.Oh@sonoma-county.org.
On September 8, Sonoma Land Trust presented a program on how we citizens can approach the comment process: view the recording here.
To learn more, please also visit www.transformsdc.com
