California Highway Opens A New Section Of Road After Decades Of Construction

While California's Highway 1 along the coast may get a lot of the road trip glory, California's Highway 101 is the faster option to get from Los Angeles up to the Oregon border. And now, you should be able to get through just a little bit faster. The 16-mile stretch of Highway 101 between Novato and Petaluma, a charming art-filled city, is known as the Marin-Sonoma Narrows, but it isn't quite as narrow anymore with the late September opening of new High-Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes on both sides of the highway.

This spot was notorious for being congested and slow for those traveling between San Francisco and Sonoma Wine Country; over 150,000 vehicles pass through the section every day. "Decades in the making and many millions of dollars later, we can finally retire the 'narrows' moniker in Marin and Sonoma," Eric Lucan, chair of the Transportation Authority of Marin board, told the Marin Independent Journal.

Widening California's Highway 101 between Marin and Sonoma counties had been a concept since the 1990s, and construction started in 2011, with sections being completed as funding came in. With the opening of the new HOV lanes, there are now over 50 miles of uninterrupted carpool lanes available between Windsor, in Sonoma County's idyllic Russian River Valley, to the Richardson Bay Bridge in Marin County near Sausalito.

There are still some touchups left to do with another month or so of minor work being completed at night, so you may still see construction workers in the area for a bit longer. Another thing to keep in mind is that cars in the HOV lanes require more than one passenger between 5 to 10 a.m. and 3 to 7 p.m. Even if you can't use the new HOV lanes yourself, there should be enough cars and buses that it loosens up the traffic overall.