DOT installing traffic controls at Highway 206, Bruce Road
When Marcia Huff heard that an elderly Oregon woman was killed last week in an accident involving a school bus at Highway 206 and Bruce Road, it brought back bad memories. She was in an accident at the same intersection that left her with partial paralysis in her right hand and pain that requires daily medication.
“I felt so bad when I heard about that lady. I haven’t been out there since our accident,” said Huff, a teacher at Woodridge Elementary School. In 1999 the Huffs sued the state Department of Transportation for failure to fix the intersection where the collision occurred.
“In our conversations with the DOT, before we settled out of court, we stressed that we felt that they should put a stop light there, or a four-way stop, but it was met with deaf ears. At that time, the DOT said they don’t put stop lights on state highways,” said Huff.
There were 38 accidents at this intersection between January 1991 and December 1996, according to DOT statistics. Since that time, DOT has added more lighting and signs to draw attention to the fact that drivers on Mount Spokane Park Drive don’t stop at that intersection.
Department of Transportation spokesman Al Gilson said that plans are under way to improve the intersection by adding a roundabout. Some of the funding for the new project will come from a hazard elimination safety grant through the Federal Highway Administration.
“For a number of years we’ve tried a variety of different concepts. We’ve tried additional signing, extra stop signs, signs that say, ‘Look again,’ signs that say, ‘Cross traffic doesn’t stop,’ etc. We’ve actually changed the lay of the land so you could see farther down the road. It’s not an unusual intersection. We’ve got high speed traffic and county road stop signs at literally hundreds of locations in this region,” said Gilson.
“Our design work on this job is about half done, and we’re going to put it out to bid in April, with construction in 2005,” said Gilson. Construction of the project will be completed in one season, and it should be completed before next winter.
According to Gilson, the roundabout design will slow people down because they won’t be able to go through it at a high speed. The DOT has installed roundabouts in similar situations across the state.
Roundabouts funnel traffic from several directions in and out of a doughnut-shaped intersection with no traffic lights. Traffic travels one way through the roundabout. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety reports that roundabouts sharply reduce crashes. Researchers at Ryerson Polytechnic University found a 39 percent overall decrease in crashes and a 76 percent decrease in injury-producing crashes. Collisions involving fatal or incapacitating injuries fell as much as 90 percent.
The latest change comes too late for a motorcyclist who was hurt in August. Glen Taylor, 72, was riding his motorcycle east on Mount Spokane Park Drive when he saw a truck, southbound on Bruce Road, stop briefly and then continue through the intersection in Taylor’s direction. “I went down immediately. The driver was yelling ‘I didn’t see you.’ I knew that intersection had had problems in the past,” said Taylor. Taylor’s motorcycle was totaled, but he’s thankful to be alive.
“Frankly I don’t know what the problem is there. There’s a stop sign there, and amber lights. I don’t see how they (the DOT) could mark it any better. But apparently there’s some problem since this school bus accident happened. That was terrible,” said Taylor.
Gilson hopes the roundabout will help avoid future close calls.
“What we’re trying to solve is a situation where the traffic control devises are not necessarily working as intended. Why do people stop, and then go in front of another vehicle when obviously it’s like any other intersection with two legs controlled by a stop sign and two that aren’t? What prompts people to miss that concept? So here’s another answer, another try,” said Gilson.