05-16-2017, 08:16 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-17-2017, 10:22 AM by Drunk Monk.)
See? This thread. Another DM prophesy.
Quote:Highway 17’s traffic, collisions increase as enforcement loosens
By KARA GUZMAN, SANTA CRUZ SENTINEL |
PUBLISHED: May 15, 2017 at 5:33 am | UPDATED: May 15, 2017 at 5:42 am
SCOTTS VALLEY – In the past few years, Highway 17 not only has become more clogged with commuters – the roadway also has become more dangerous, with more accidents and looser enforcement.
Highway 17’s minority of unsafe drivers – motorists speeding, tailgating and suddenly changing lanes – are a major factor behind the steady climb in the number of collisionsover the past four years, according to CHP officers.
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The winding, mountain road connecting Santa Cruz and San Jose had 983 collisions in 2016, up from 664, 583 and 420 the previous three years, according to CHP reports.
The top documented cause for collisions, by far, is speeding, said Capt. Paul Vincent of Santa Cruz’s CHP unit, which patrols Highway 17 from Santa Cruz to the Summit.
For most of the highway, the speed limit is 50, a safety precaution determined by Caltrans surveys, said Officer Ross Lee of San Jose’s CHP unit, which patrols the San Jose side of Highway 17.
“Nobody comes up 17 going 50 miles per hour,” said Lee. “They’re all typically 60, 65 or above. So that’s the main enforcement we’re doing on 17, that’s speed enforcement.”
MORE TRAFFIC
Another issue is increasingly heinous rush hour traffic, as more commuters flock to Silicon Valley’s booming economy.
The most recent Caltrans data from 2015showed around 59,000 cars each day on Highway 17, compared to 57,000 and 54,000 drivers the previous two years.
Santa Cruz resident Carter McCoy, a teacher in Fremont, began commuting over the hill in 2008. It was the height of the financial crisis and “no one was on the road,” he said.
Now Highway 17’s daily traffic is the worst he’s seen, McCoy said, and it’s not because of this winter’s heavy rains, which caused landslides intermittently closing the highway. This era of hellish traffic began before the rains, and has continued since, he said.
“It feels like it’s getting worse every day. Or maybe it’s my patience getting worse every day, but it definitely is,” McCoy said.
Recently, he’s noticed a backup every workday afternoon, where he’s never seen a recurring slowdown before: on southbound Highway 17 at Vine Hill Road in Scotts Valley. Drivers, likely trying to avoid highway traffic, are turning left, clogging the left lane of the highway.
As recently as Thursday, a collision at that intersection blocked the left lane, causing heavy traffic until a tow truck could come, around an hour later.
The backup is likely caused by the months-long closure of San Jose-Soquel Road, a parallel mountain road that was washed out in the storms, said Vincent, of the CHP.
“I don’t know if there’s anything we can do. We’ll take a look at that, but with Soquel-San Jose being closed down for such a long term . it’s really modified the traffic pattern for the entire county,” said Vincent. “And then you’ve got apps such as Waze that are directing people through residential areas that we normally wouldn’t see, so our traffic complaints are on the rise.”
SAFETY EFFORTS
Vincent is a member of the Safe on 17 Task Force, formed in 2000 to develop collision-reducing strategies, Other members include the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission, the San Francisco Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission, CalTrans, legislators and local police and fire departments.
The group has taken a “Triple E” approach to Highway 17 safety: engineering, enforcement and education, said Ginger Dykaar, a transportation planner from the regional transportation commission.
For example, Caltrans has done an “amazing amount of work,” to make Highway 17’s design safer, said Dykaar, such as installing a high friction surface at Laurel Curve to slow motorists.
The number of fatal and injury collisions on Highway 17 dropped after a peak in 1998, which had 283. That figure has mostly ranged from 130 to 160 each year from 2000 to 2014, until it began its climb back up to 262 fatal and injury collisions in 2016.
As far as enforcement, CHP units from San Jose and Santa Cruz have both received annual $50,000 grants administered by each area’s transportation commissions, to supplement CHP’s patrols on Highway 17.
CHP’S CHALLENGES
But recently, the numbers of CHP citations written on Highway 17 have dropped, from 27 citations a day in 2013, to 25, 19 and 18 in subsequent years, according to CHP data.
Vincent said citations are down statewide, due to staff turnover. Each time a CHP unit gets a new cadet, a seasoned officer is paired with the cadet for three to four months of training, which slows operations.
“We’re currently receiving cadets practically every four to six months,” said Vincent. “So I think we’re slated to get in six new cadets next month. Well, that takes six officers to train those cadets.”
He said his unit has a new plan for Highway 17 enforcement, which includes stationing supervisors along the route “as much as possible” in black and white patrol cars, which helps slow traffic.
His unit also is considering shifting officers’ schedules so that more officers are on the highway in low-traffic hours, such as the early morning and midafternoon, when they’re likely to find speeders, he said.
“Hopefully, we’ll be seeing an increase of black and whites (patrol cars) and officers on Highway 17, as far as our (Santa Cruz) side is concerned,” said Vincent. “We’ve implemented this on Highway 1 on our North Coast of Santa Cruz County, and it seems to be showing a dramatic impact.”
Skip Shervington, a retired assistant sheriff with the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office, patrolled the Santa Cruz Mountains in the late 1990s, and routinely wrote tickets on Highway 17. He also commuted on Highway 17 for 13 years, until his retirement in 2014.
Shervington said Highway 17’s topography, with its blind curves and lack of shoulders and center medians, adds to the difficulty of enforcement, since there’s few places where police can safely pull over speeders.
And veteran commuters know where those places are, he said.
“When you’re approaching the Summit of Highway 17, everybody slows down. Why? Because it’s a long open stretch and there’s usually a highway patrol there running radar,” said Shervington. “So it’s just like that. So you know there’s certain pockets and pullouts.”
Also, if there’s an accident elsewhere in the Santa Cruz Mountains, such as on Highway 35 or Black Road, CHP officers must divert there, which means less enforcement on Highway 17, Shervington said.
He said commuters can help by driving slower, keeping the left lane clear and letting aggressive drivers “just go by and let the cops deal with them at the next corner.”
“The main issue is speed, of course. It gets very easy, especially when the roads are dry, to let your speed creep up,” said Shervington. “But the problem is those blind curves. You don’t know if there’s an accident coming around the corner.
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