Rancho Cordova opens bike and pedestrian path to help keep kids off the road
The city of Rancho Cordova formally opened a $2.4 million bike-and-pedestrian path last week, completing a route from Coloma Road to the American River Parkway about three-quarters of a mile north.
The shared-use path allows people to bike or walk fully separated from vehicle traffic on Chase Drive, where at least five vehicle crashes have occurred since 2018. The path runs alongside Cordova High School and through Hagan Community Park before reaching parkway. It was mostly funded by the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, the city said in a news release.
UC Berkeley’s Transportation Injury Mapping System shows that five crashes have caused minor injuries along Chase Drive between Coloma Road and the park, all at intersections. Three of the crashes occurred at or near Rinda Drive.
According to the Transportation Injury Mapping System, none of the five crashes on Chase involved pedestrians or cyclists.
Cordova High School and the directly adjacent Mills Middle School are both located on Coloma Road — a far more dangerous thoroughfare than the side street where the shared use path was constructed. Right by the two schools, a 59-year-old cyclist was fatally struck in a nighttime crash in 2023; a 42-year-old driver was severely injured in a single-vehicle crash in 2017; and a 67-year-old driver flipped his car and was severely injured heading into the curve on Coloma and Chase in 2021. The city has installed bold, flashing signage warning drivers going into that curve.
At least eight more crashes on Coloma have caused minor injuries in front of the schools since 2015.
In the immediate area of Cordova High School and Mills Middle School, signs indicate that the speed limit on Coloma is 25 mph when children are present; directly outside the school zone, the posted speed limit is 40 mph — an often lethal speed in the event of a pedestrian crash. Coloma has narrow, unprotected bike lanes, two general-purpose travel lanes in each direction, plus a center turning lane. A wider street allows for higher and more dangerous driver speeds.
