There’s a lot of hemming and hawing, a lot of down-the-road
proposals, a few stop-gap measures, but not a whole lot of action
when it comes to improving the dangerous and ever-increasing
traffic congestion at the infamous stop-and-go intersection known
as the
”
Don Pacheco Y.
”
Where highways 152 and 156 meet at the base of Pacheco Pass,
there have been 23 accidents, including 10 injury incidents and one
fatality since 2000. And the huge snaking traffic jams behind that
intersection on busy days are likely the cause of plenty more
accidents
– not to mention air pollution and frustration.
There’s a lot of hemming and hawing, a lot of down-the-road proposals, a few stop-gap measures, but not a whole lot of action when it comes to improving the dangerous and ever-increasing traffic congestion at the infamous stop-and-go intersection known as the “Don Pacheco Y.”
Where highways 152 and 156 meet at the base of Pacheco Pass, there have been 23 accidents, including 10 injury incidents and one fatality since 2000. And the huge snaking traffic jams behind that intersection on busy days are likely the cause of plenty more accidents – not to mention air pollution and frustration.
It’s time legislators and transportation and elected officials stop ping-ponging around before the congestion, which causes safety issues along the corridor, gets even worse.
According to Caltrans, 30,000 vehicles a day squeeze through the intersection and if you’re trying to make a left turn from westbound Highway 152 onto southbound Highway 156, you can just about forget it unless, of course, another motorist stops to let you by.
Neither Caltrans nor the Valley Transportation Authority have any immediate plans to upgrade the intersection. Traffic jams are likely to continue for years – if not decades – along the only major artery that connects the Central Valley to the South Bay and south along U.S. 101 or to the coast, and vice versa.
To help alleviate congestion, courteous drivers headed east on Highway 152 are known to slow or stop to allow a driver to make a left turn onto Highway 156. At peak times, the California Highway Patrol stations an officer to direct traffic.
Those remedies are like treating pneumonia with cough lozenges.
Down the road, there’s the 3-in-1 Highway Plan from members of the San Benito County Farm Bureau that proposes changes for highways 152, 156 and 25, and there’s the VTA’s “Southern Gateway Project” currently being reviewed that could eventually provide hundreds of millions of dollars to improve the interchange. But those proposals aren’t likely to be completed for years.
And solutions like a signal light make no sense (though Caltrans even says the number of vehicles passing through the “Y” doesn’t warrant a signal light).
A light would only choke traffic in both directions, as evident during weekends and holidays when eastbound traffic on Highway 152 can back up to U.S. 101 and north to San Martin.
The obvious solution, the necessary solution, is to build a fly-over ramp from westbound Highway 152 to southbound Highway 156. Caltrans and the area CHP unit agree. Caltrans officials have discussed the benefits of a fly-over, but nothing is part of its specific plans for at least the next three years.
It’s time the VTA, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors representative Don Gage and the San Benito County Board of Supervisors push hard for a fly-over ramp before more flowers appear in a shrine on the side of the roadway marking the death of a driver – perhaps a courteous one – who gave a life because the area’s public officials couldn’t get a dangerous road fixed.
To respond to this editorial or comment on this issue, please send or bring letters to Editor, Hollister Free Lance, 350 Sixth St., Hollister, Calif. 95023 or fax to 637-4104 or e-mail to
