If you have followed Healdsburg's local news this year, you could be forgiven for thinking the whole town is under construction at once. SMART broke ground on its long-awaited rail extension. The city approved a redesign of Healdsburg Avenue. And a state grant paid for a full rebuild of March Avenue. Three headlines, three projects, all landing within a few months of each other. Only one of them had a scheduled traffic detour before winter.
The other two are real, funded, and moving. They are just not under your tires yet, and the gap between "this project exists" and "this project is affecting my commute" is wider than the news coverage suggests. Knowing which is which puts the completed detour and the projects still years out in perspective.
The One That's Actually Live: March Avenue
March Avenue is the project that had a scheduled traffic detour this fall. The city's $3.35 million rebuild of the half-mile stretch between Healdsburg Avenue and University Street started in spring 2026 with underground utility work, water service replacement, and new fire hydrants. The paving phase, the part that actually closes lanes, ran from August 24 through September 2, alternating eastbound and westbound closures on a set schedule, with the road reopening in the evenings and on weekends. Traffic was rerouted via Powell Avenue during working hours.
What comes out the other side is a genuinely different street. New 4.5-foot bike lanes, separated from traffic by a 2-foot striped buffer, run both directions. Curb bulbouts at intersections shorten the pedestrian crossing distance, and flashing crossing beacons now mark Lupine Road and Prentice Drive, both of which sit near school and park routes. Every intersection along the corridor got ADA-compliant curb ramp upgrades. The state covered about $2.1 million of the total through a grant, with the rest split between county and local funds.
The city's target for full completion is October. If your daily route touches March Avenue between Healdsburg Avenue and University Street, that is the timeline that matters, not the SMART extension and not the Complete Streets redesign a mile away.
The One in Every Headline That Hasn't Touched a Street Yet
The SMART extension is the biggest, most expensive, and most frequently covered project on this list, and it is also the one furthest from actually disrupting daily traffic. The $269 million, nine-mile extension from Windsor to Healdsburg is fully funded through a combination of federal, state, regional, and local grants. Field crews began potholing, essentially vacuum-excavating test holes to locate underground utilities, near Grove Street in late April 2026, then worked north along the old rail corridor from Old Redwood Highway. In late March, drill rigs pulled soil samples at several points along the line, including near the historic depot site.
That work is design-phase fieldwork. It tells engineers what is underground before anyone pours concrete. SMART's own project timeline puts active construction starting in spring 2027, with passenger service targeted for the end of 2028. The new station will sit at the historic depot on Hudson Street, the same site that served passenger rail from around 1891 until service was discontinued in 1958.
The scope of what is coming is not small. SMART's chief engineer has said the project will likely replace most or all of the existing railroad bridges along the corridor, seven or eight in total, with the most demanding being an entirely new span over the Russian River just south of town. The existing bridge cannot be retrofitted to modern standards and will be torn down. Piers supporting the new span are expected to go 40 to 60 feet deep. A companion pedestrian and bike path will run alongside the rail line, and the city, county, and Town of Windsor are working with the Federal Railroad Administration to establish a quiet zone that would end routine train horn use at grade crossings between Windsor and northern Healdsburg.
The project is also still expanding on paper. On August 19, just three weeks before this was written, the SMART board voted to add an entirely new station stop in Geyserville, eight miles north of Healdsburg, as part of the eventual push toward Cloverdale. That is a meaningful step for the rail system's future reach, and it is exactly the kind of announcement that makes the whole extension feel imminent. But a vote to add a future stop further up the line does not move the Healdsburg segment any closer to breaking ground this fall. The project is very real. Active construction is scheduled to start in spring 2027.
The One With a Later Construction Start
The Healdsburg Avenue Complete Streets Project is the one most likely to catch a resident off guard, because older coverage set an expectation that has since changed. Reporting from a few years ago suggested surface improvements to the corridor, which will eventually reduce Healdsburg Avenue from five lanes to three between Powell Avenue and the northern city limit, could begin as early as 2026, with completion by 2028. That timeline has moved. The city's current project page, last updated in July 2026, now lists the project status as design, with construction scheduled for September 2027 through March 2029.
The redesign itself has not changed. It still calls for protected Class IV bikeways, bus turnouts, pedestrian refuge islands with rectangular rapid flashing beacons, curb extensions for traffic calming, and new street trees, funded through a mix of grants and Measure T dollars totaling roughly $15.4 million. What has changed is when any of it shows up on the ground, and that matters for one more piece of the puzzle: Foss Creek Pathway.
The Foss Creek Pathway is the paved, 4.1-mile route that a 2023 count by the city found was already carrying an average of more than 300 users a day, about a quarter of them on bikes, a figure the Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition cited when it gave the pathway a Golden Spoke Award that same year. Most of it is finished, but two segments remain. One, a third of a mile, is being built as part of the private North Village development. The final half-mile is folded directly into the Healdsburg Avenue Complete Streets Project, which means its completion now rides on the same 2027-2029 window as the road diet, not the earlier timeline residents may remember.
What This Actually Means for Your Fall
If you live along or near March Avenue, the paving detour is over, but the city still targets full completion in October.
If you are tracking SMART because you have heard the extension is "happening," you are right, but the visible fieldwork this year, the potholing, the soil borings, even the new Geyserville stop vote, is all upstream of construction that starts in Healdsburg proper. Spring 2027 is the date that matters for anything showing up on your actual street.
And if you have been holding onto an older timeline for the Healdsburg Avenue redesign or the last stretch of Foss Creek Pathway, it is worth updating that expectation. Both now sit inside a 2027-2029 construction window per the city's current planning documents, not the sooner dates that circulated a few years back.
None of this is a reason for concern. It is a sign of a small city running several large, fully funded infrastructure projects at once, which is uncommon and worth appreciating even while it is inconvenient in patches. The trick this fall is knowing which patch is which.
Questions about how any of this intersects with a specific property or a specific street in Healdsburg are exactly the kind of local detail worth a direct conversation. If you would like to talk through what is actually changing in a particular part of town, reach out to Sudha Schlesinger to request a private consultation.