Bolinas Road Project Completed; Both Lanes Open

For Immediate Release –

Marin County, CA –

The latest entry wraps up in a series of projects focusing on 6.5 miles of roadway

The retaining wall and road repair project on Bolinas Road at milepost 5.73, about four miles west of Fairfax Town Hall, has been completed and both lanes along the full length of the road are now open, ending the intermittent lane and roads closures required for construction since the project began in May 2024.

The $2.2 million project was undertaken to repair damages caused by several storms in March 2024, which were declared disaster events.

This is one of the components of a larger effort to repair damage and proactively improve resiliency along 6.5 miles of Bolinas Road. That effort includes a series of projects, some of which are underway and some are still in their initial phases.

Another component, referred to as Bolinas Road Resiliency and Community Connection, is the effort to seek grant funding for a $30.3 million project aimed at investigating 6.4 miles of roadway for additional vulnerable areas that need repair or monitoring. The undertaking is a collaboration between the County of Marin’s Department of Public Works (DPW) and the Town of Fairfax.

Bolinas Road is critical link in the County’s road network, as it is the emergency evacuation route for hundreds of homes and provides crucial access for wildland firefighting. The road also serves as the primary access to maintain three Marin Water reservoirs and a large water treatment facility that provides over one-third of Marin Water’s drinking water supply.

The project at milepost 5.73 included reconstructing approximately 275 feet of road where a slide had reduced its structural integrity, and adding a 200-foot-long retaining wall for support. The extensive construction work required 24/7 traffic control measures, which included several months of single lane access with approximately two-minute traffic hold times on weekends and a full closure of Bolinas Road from Azalea Hill to Ridgecrest during the work week. As per standard procedure, active emergency service vehicles and dam maintenance personnel were always granted access.

Two more retaining wall projects are underway along Bolinas Road. A project at milepost 1.0 is nearing completion, and the work entails building a 100-foot-long retaining wall at that location as well as reinforcing the existing adjacent 100-foot-long retaining wall at milepost 1.09 with new anchors. The next project on Bolinas Road is slated to begin in fall 2025 and will result in repairs to three slides located at mileposts 1.27, 2.12 and 2.19, which are between 1.5 and 2.5 miles west of downtown Fairfax. The project will include building retaining walls and repairing the roadway at each site.

With Bolinas Road being such a crucial route in the County’s road network, completing the Resiliency and Community Connection is a top priority for DPW. Staff are applying for several federal grants to fund the full plan for the corridor, but project-specific work continues on track due to the time sensitive nature of addressing the immediate needs for the vulnerable roadway and ensuring public safety.

To help fund further work on Bolinas Road, DPW has applied for a planning grant through U.S. Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD) program. If selected, the grant will fund 80% of costs associated with planning, investigating and designing additional projects intended to bolster the corridor. The resulting plan would be used to triage and repair locations as future funding becomes available, as well as have projects prepared in the case of any further damages that are sustained at those locations. Preparing projects well in advance also provides a stronger basis for pursuing grant opportunities for construction.

Additionally, DPW plans to submit two more grant applications to USDOT. One is a second opportunity to compete for the same BUILD planning grant that has already applied for, should the first application not be selected. The other USDOT grant application in the works is for $30.2 million and would allow the County of Marin and the Town of Fairfax to move forward with repairs on the most vulnerable sections, thereby expediting the overall Resiliency and Community Connection effort by doing the repairs in the most efficient way possible, which would minimize the duration of construction impacts for the residents along the corridor.