Thumbnail photo: Caltrans officials and Del Norte Local Transportation commissioners discussed safety improvements to the intersection of U.S. 101 and Elk Valley Cross Road. | Image courtesy of Google Maps Though acknowledging that a roundabout would help reduce the number of collisions on U.S. 101 at Elk Valley Cross Road, it’s unlikely Caltrans will receive the funding to construct it, Safety Investigator Clark Davis said. Davis told Del Norte Local Transportation Commissioners on Tuesday that they agreed with its assessment that the collision rate at the intersection exceeded the state average. But with most of those crashes involving drivers that aren’t seeing the approaching traffic behind the car they’re trying to avoid, there isn’t much Caltrans can do, Davis said. “We can’t make the cars invisible,” he said. “The best we can do is improve some signing and some delineation, which is what we’re planning to do.” Davis’s presentation to transportation commissioners comes about five years after the regional agency completed a plan for the entire Elk Valley Cross Road corridor from Parkway Drive in the east to Lake Earl Drive in the west. The plan included two major highway crossings at U.S. 199 and U.S. 101, which had identical collision rates, according to DNLTC Executive Director Tamera Leighton. According to the staff report she included with the DNTLC’s Tuesday agenda, Leighton said that the DNLTC Elk Valley Cross Road Corridor Plan from 2020 shows an overall collision rate that’s 241% of the state average and injury and fatality collision rates of 234% of the state average between 2009 and 2018. Between Jan. 1, 2020 and Dec. 31, 2024, the overall collision rate within the corridor was 263% of the statewide average with the injury and fatality collision rate being 217% of the statewide average, according to Leighton’s report, citing data from Caltrans Division Chief and Safe System Lead Sheri Rodriguez. Leighton noted that while Elk Valley Cross road is short, in addition to the two highway crossings, there’s “plenty of shoulder” and it runs adjacent to Sunset High School. Leighton urged commissioners to be “strong advocates for safety at this location.” According to Del Norte County District 1 Supervisor Darrin Short, Caltrans modified U.S. 199 to reduce the number of lanes near Elk Valley Cross Road to two. The agency brought the stop signs “way out into the roadway” and made it narrower reducing the number and severity of the collisions at the intersection, Short said. “I was wondering if Caltrans had considered doing the sam ekind of thing at Elk Valley Cross Road and 101,” Short said. “It moves from a single lane to a double lane at about that intersection, it seems like it would be a relatively easy fix to narrow up that intersection similar to 199.” Davis said he came up with the idea for the improvements on U.S. 199, but while the Caltrans looked into seeing whether the stop signs could be adjusted “they’re as close as we can get them.” Short said he was suggesting dropping a lane of traffic. Davis acknowledged that doing so would have an impact on the flow of traffic. “The real issue is when a vehicle on 101 slows to get into a turn pocket, the vehicle at the stop sign sees that vehicle is slowing and turning and assumes that everything’s OK and they pull out only to discover that there was a car behind them,” Davis said. “Now, fortunately, there is enough sight distance that those vehicles are able to slow down almost to a stop so collisions are not catastrophic.” However, Andreas Krause, with Caltrans District 1 Traffic Safety office, said that if Caltrans did drop a lane on U.S. 101, it would change its current expressway designation. “We would definitely look into what we can do with a possible lane drop for that intersection,” he said. “But because the collisions that we’re having at that intersection are [of] low severity, there’s not going to be safety funding available to do any kind of major reconstruction work there such as an R cut or a roundabout as was recommended by the Del Norte plans as alternatives to consider.” According to David Melendrez, while a roundabout will likely not be funded on U.S. 101, Caltrans is currently in the process of installing one at Elk Valley Cross Road and U.S. 199. That project will go out to bid in December, he said. “Part of that effort is to re-stripe the Parkway [Drive] where it comes into 199 and at the roundabout we would be dropping the lanes, particularly the southbound lane from 199 toward 101,” Melendrez said. “Currently right at Parkway there are three lanes that merge right before Elk Valley. We can’t have three lanes merging into a roundabout — we can only have one lane, so we are actually planning to restripe that area.” The roundabout on U.S. 199 will be under construction in the spring, he said. Leighton said that the Del Norte Local Transportation Commission could help identify a funding source for a roundabout on U.S. 101. In the meantime, she said, moving the two-lane portion of the road closer to Crescent City would slow traffic down. “It’s not that big of a deal if we have to slow all the speeds down to 55,” she said. “We succeed in reducing the serious injuries and fatalities, which, the injuries and fatality rate is still 217% of the statewide average. While that may not be a significant data point for Caltrans, it seems like one to me.”