Dangerous by design: Do these Sacramento-area streets encourage drivers to speed?
Is it possible that the design of Laguna Boulevard in Elk Grove makes it more dangerous for crashes than the average street?
Elk Grove officials this week said they didn’t have any data on hand that suggest that. But there have been two bad crashes on that street since last June. And reader Elizabeth Zima, who drives Laguna everyday, says it seems like the street is designed to aggravate drivers and make some want to speed.
She acknowledges she’s pushed her automobile slightly above the already generous 45 mph speed limit at times to chase a green light – while cars zoom past her at what she guesses may be 70 miles per hour.
Why is that happening?
Laguna Boulevard is a relatively straight, flat and wide street that serves as a feeder road to two freeways – Highway 99 and Interstate 5 – in a fast-growing and increasingly congested urban area frequented by harried commuters. Traffic signals are frequent, but distanced just enough from each other to let drivers pick up a little too much speed in between.
It’s not the placid promenade it ought to be. But we’re not picking on Laguna. There are streets throughout the region that seem to beckon drivers to speed up. (Speed is, no surprise, the main cause of serious crashes.)
Is there a major street in your community that strikes you as dangerous because of the way it is designed?
Which is it and why? We’d like to hear (those of you reading this on sacbee.com can nominate a street in the comments section below this story). We can check with local traffic engineers and see if crash rates are high there and if there are any plans to make safety changes.
For instance:
- We’ve heard many complaints about Scott Road in east Sacramento County, a bouncy, narrow and shoulderless road that is full of surprises. It suddenly whips right and then left out of nowhere, and is notorious for standing water in some of its dips during winter rains.
- Iron Point Road in Folsom is unique – a wide downhill road that crosses numerous commercial driveways where cars must cautiously poke their nose out. A grammar school teacher was killed there pulling out of an outlet mall lot when her car was broadsided by one of two racing teenage drivers.
- On Florin Road in south Sacramento, there is no signal or crosswalk for more than a quarter mile between Luther Burbank High School on the south side of the street and the light rail station on the north side. Students have beaten a path in the dirt in the center median where they dart across the street between clusters of traffic. The city of Sacramento has identified Florin Road as one of its five most dangerous streets. Upcoming fixes include a traffic light and crosswalk at that beaten path spot.
Dangerous streets in Sacramento
The other most dangerous city streets are Marysville Boulevard and El Camino Avenue in north Sacramento, Broadway and Stockton Boulevard in central Sacramento, and South Stockton Boulevard in south Sacramento.
Many of them are the wide streets that were built a half century ago to allow a lot of cars to move quickly, Sacramento traffic chief Ryan Moore says.
The mentality has changed in some local cities where traffic engineers now are designing what they call “complete streets” that slow or “calm” traffic, hopefully without bottling it up, to make streets safer for pedestrians and bicyclists.
Sacramento County road design engineer Steve White recently oversaw a major redo of Hazel Avenue in Fair Oaks that in fact widened the street to get more cars, but incorporated designs to persuade drivers to go more slowly. That includes a center median and rows of trees to give drivers a sense of a more narrow corridor, and more clearly marked crosswalks.
The city of Sacramento plans to turn sections of Broadway into one lane in each direction, with a turn lane in the middle, and add buffered bike lanes as well as sidewalk bulb-outs to give pedestrians a shorter distance to cross the street.
But reducing streets size isn’t the answer everywhere.
On Laguna Boulevard, where all the red lights “turn you into a zombie,” resident Zima said, the city is trying to synchronize the lights so drivers can go the speed limit or a little slower and consistently hit green lights.
The city recently synchronized lights on Laguna east of Bruceville Road. Elk Grove Traffic Engineer Ryan Chapman said the city hopes to do the same for the west end of Laguna soon, as well as on Elk Grove Boulevard.
It’s not easy to do. We may write about that soon. But on streets like Laguna, calmer drivers are safer drivers.
This story was originally published March 4, 2020 at 5:00 AM.