Courtesy of City of Santa Rosa

Rendering of the planned Highway 101 pedestrian overcrossing with SRJC in the background.

The City of Santa Rosa will begin construction on a Highway 101 pedestrian overcrossing near Elliot Avenue after 17 years of planning with Santa Rosa Junior College, according to Santa Rosa City officials. 

Students on campus seemed unaware of the project or ambivalent about its impact. 

“Most of the residents stay on campus and they’re local, I feel like it shouldn’t be such a major problem,” said Lia Garcia, a SRJC student and receptionist at Polly O’Meara Doyle Hall. “Personally, I don’t think that it would be such a great idea because Coddingtown is so close. Maybe invest in activities around like the shopping centers.”

First suggested by Santa Rosa City Council in 2007, the overcrossing would connect SRJC’s Polly O’Meara Doyle Hall with the Coddingtown Mall area. 

The overcrossing will require several temporary and permanent easements to grant the city the right to build on SRJC property.

“We’ve been meeting through the whole design to make sure that it works and interacts with the touchdown points on campus,” said Lisa Welsh, the project’s supervising engineer for the city of Santa Rosa. “There’s been a lot of collaboration making sure that we don’t do redundant actions.”

The pedestrian bridge is part of the city’s larger climate and community goals. Santa Rosa reports that 9.4% of homes within a one-mile radius of the footbridge represent zero-car households, and 59.3% of all households in that radius are rent-burdened. 

The city estimated that the overcrossing, with improvements in a one-mile radius of the site, would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 7.9%. 

The footbridge will cost an estimated $46 million, with $28 million allocated for construction costs. The rest of the money will continue to go into the “design, environmental assessments, quality assurance, quality control items and contract management and oversight” according to Welsh. 

The city approved the design in August and will begin construction next summer, pending contractor bids.

The city expects the bridge to open in 2027 if construction stays on schedule.

“With time comes more information and ability for the community to engage more,” Welsh said. “There’s been a lot of time spent with the community and many stakeholders to try to align the pedestrian crossing to the optimal place so that the city gets the best benefit of this active transportation corridor.”