Highway 101 town hall seeks to push solutions
Concerned south Monterey County residents are hoping their town hall meeting on Thursday with transportation leaders will bring change to their section of Highway 101.
Numerous accidents and deteriorating roads are some of the issues they are bringing up, especially speeding.
Salinas resident Kathleen Azevedlgletz takes her son to school in Spreckels every morning using Highway 101. It takes her two to three minutes to wait for a break in traffic, and she says it is dangerous.
“Many people are at 75, 80 miles an hour and crossing lanes all over the place to get on and off at Abbott, which I have many times had to slam on my brakes to avoid an accident,” she said.
“There’s a lot of people going fast and when they gun up against the truck, and he’s going quite a bit slower because it takes them a while to get going off of these crossroads, it’s dangerous,” Dennis Caprara, a Salinas Valley farmer.
The California Highway Patrol issued almost 1,700 citations in the Highway 101 corridor south of Salinas alone last year. Cross roadways make it all the more dangerous for commuters.
“We’re just seeing this rise in aggressive driving and high speed,” said Kelly Cardoza, a captain with CHP.
During the town hall Thursday evening, residents came together with leaders from CHP, Caltrans and the Transportation Agency for Monterey County.
They wanted to find ways to fix the speeding issue, along with traffic reduction and how to alleviate the dangers of left turns and on-ramps on Highway 101.
A representative with TAMC says they have about $20 million from Measure X that can be used to improve the corridor. Monterey County Supervisor Chris Lopez also says they are planning on resurfacing Old Stage and River Roads in the next fiscal year.
But some are tired with how long it is taking to fix the problems.
“It takes so long to do these studies, these environmental studies or whatever kind of study, a lot of money spent on studies and nothing gets done. Just studies, studies, studies,” said Caprara.
For now, CHP is focused on short-term solutions, including 24-hour enforcement patrols for the 65 mile an hour speed limit.
“We don’t enforce the law and write tickets because we just like doing it, we do it really to change behavior and save lives,” said Capt. Cardoza.
“If we’re all focused on our driving and we see things ahead of us happen, we have time to react,” said Azevedlgletz.
TAMC says they are going to take about $500K and use it to draw up concepts on improvements to Highway 101. They will then send it to Caltrans for environmental review.
