MIDDLETOWN, Calif. – A three-way stop will be installed at a south county intersection that was the site of a fatal crash last month, while an effort is under way to lay the groundwork for building a newer, and safer, intersection nearby.
Hours before Caltrans officials met with community members to discuss safety issues at Hartmann Road and Highway 29 – along with nearby paving projects – the agency announced its plans to install a three-way stop at the intersection, which has far higher than average crash rates.
“We want to stop the carnage that's been going on at that intersection,” Ralph Martinelli, chief of the traffic safety office for Caltrans' District 1, told the group of more than 50 community members who gathered at the Calpine Geothermal Visitor Center in Middletown Tuesday night.
District 1 Supervisor Jim Comstock also told Caltrans officials on Tuesday that the county was prepared to move forward with efforts to build a new intersection with Highway 29 at the nearby Arabian Lane outside of Hidden Valley Lake.
Caltrans contractors recently began the installation of actuated flashing beacons at the intersection, where 69-year-old Samira Sickels of Clearlake died June 23 while pulling out onto the highway.
Martinelli said the intersection improvements, which began the last week of June, were implemented as the result of a fatal crash there in May 2010, and had been scheduled well before the Sickels crash.
South county community members have been raising issues about the intersection's safety – one reader, Rachel Hipol, called it “death valley” in a post on Lake County News' Facebook page – and it appears that anecdotal evidence about the high volume of collisions is backed up by Caltrans data.
Caltrans' statistics – based in part on data which Martinelli told Lake County News was provided by the local California Highway Patrol office – concluded that the intersection's actual accident rates include fatality numbers that are 15 times the statewide average, while injury collisions occur there at six times the statewide average and the intersection's total collisions are five times the statewide average.
The information Caltrans shared Tuesday night included a four-page fact sheet on the Hartmann Road intersection that showed there had been 27 collisions at the intersection between July 1, 2004, and June 30, 2011. Of those, two were fatals, 13 resulted in injuries and 18 were broadsides.
Martinelli told the group that after the June 23 crash, he received a phone call from California Highway Patrol Officer Kevin Domby, telling him, “We've got to do something.”
Caltrans staff on Tuesday offered details about their plans for the stop sign preparations, which will be incorporated into a repaving project on Highway 29 from the Lake/Napa County line to Spruce Grove Road. That work is scheduled to start in August.
A change order will cover the restriping and new signage in preparation for the three-way stop signs, which Caltrans said will be uncovered when the final striping is completed in late August or early September. Street lighting also is going to be installed to illuminate the intersection.
Asked by a woman why the intersection was built the way it was, Martinelli pointed out that the south county has seen a lot of growth in recent years, suggesting that the connections between county and state roads haven't been adequately addressed.
That area of Highway 29 has an average daily traffic rate of 11,000 vehicles, with Hartmann Road itself traveled by 4,500 vehicles daily, according to Caltrans.
While it's planning to install the three-way stop, Caltrans isn't planning to install a traffic light, with Martinelli explaining that the intersection's orientation – a 1,000-foot radius horizontal curve with a 10-percent cross slope – wasn't ideal for a stoplight.
Alan Escarda, a Caltrans construction engineer who helped lead the meeting, added that one of the factors most influencing highway safety is geometry.
Escarda said when Caltrans encounters a problem area, it addresses it through the “three Es” – education, engineering and enforcement.
Caltrans indicated Tuesday that it had grant funding that could be used to educate the community, including teen drivers, which one teen who had been in a crash last year suggested to them was important.
Caltrans' proposed longterm fix is to build a new intersection with signalization at Arabian Lane, just north of Hartmann Road. The Hartmann Road exit onto Highway 29 would then be blocked off and traffic rerouted over to Arabian Lane.
That's where Comstock said he had advocated for an intersection to be placed in the 1990s, but was overruled at the time by the state.
“It didn't get done right,” he said.
However, Comstock – who said Caltrans told him that the county needed to take the lead in launching the project – stated, “We're ready to initiate that.”
The proposed Arabian Lane intersection had originally been tied to the development of the Valley Oaks subdivision, but Comstock said that project isn't coming any time in the near future.
Rather, he suggested moving forward without having the intersection be contingent on the development, stating that he had the support of county Public Works Director Scott De Leon and believed he could get the support of enough of his colleagues on the Board of Supervisors to move forward.
“We want to work with you,” he told Caltrans, adding, “That intersection needs to move that 200 to 300 yards.”
Escarda said that proposal is a “long-range” project that would be at least three to five years out. Comstock said that was OK, and that community members already were circulating petitions to support the new intersection.
Organizing the community's support and creating partnerships, Escarda said, would make a difference in getting support for the project at the state level.
Community members assured him they were up to the task.
Businessman Tom Darms said they've worked through a multiyear process with the county and the state to get roadway improvements through downtown Middletown.
“This should not be a problem, getting that intersection moved,” he said.
CHP Sgt. Dave Stark, who along with Domby was on hand for the meeting, credited the District 1 Caltrans team for being the most responsive he's worked with in his 25 years as a CHP officer.
Stark also pledged to send more officers into the area while the new intersection improvements are being installed.
“I think this project at Hartmann is really going to save lives, and that's what it's all about,” said Stark.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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