Drivers on Highway 101 can now coast from suburban Novato to Sonoma County, along a newly-widened stretch that marks the end of a 30-year rebuild.
The once-notorious Marin-Sonoma Narrows no longer befits its name, now redesigned with three lanes between Atherton Avenue and the county line. The new, high-occupancy vehicle lanes, which opened Monday at 5 a.m., link 52 miles of continuous carpool from Windsor to the Richardson Bay Bridge.
Conceived to eliminate bottlenecks, accommodate a development boom in Wine Country and modernize stretches of freeway that lacked grade separations, the project had its genesis in the 1990s but had to be completed in phases, as funding became available. It cost more than $1 billion to fix 101 from Windsor to the Marin County border, and $762 million alone for the 16-mile “Narrows” portion…