Y-S goal: Eliminate fatalities and serious injuries on roads

Yahoo

12-06-2025

'Unacceptably high rates'
With a goal to eliminate traffic fatalities and serious injuries on local roads by 2050, the Regional Safety Action Plan (RSAP) was presented to the Yuba County Board of Supervisors at Tuesday's board meeting.
Taking six years of data from the California Highway Patrol and local law enforcement, combined with information from a 'robust community engagement process,' officials have partnered with Sutter County, Marysville, Live Oak, Yuba City and Wheatland to develop a comprehensive action plan that 'addresses the unacceptably high rates of motor vehicle fatalities in the region.'
'Yuba County ranked eleventh out of the fifty-eight counties in California in terms of the number of collisions resulting in fatalities or severe injuries. Sutter County was right behind it at number thirteen out of the fifty-eight counties,' said retired Yuba County public works director Dan Peterson, who is acting as facilitator between the six entities for this project. 'The intent is to develop this clear, comprehensive safety plan that allows us to identify safety corridors where we need to address safety issues, and also help guide the selection of the safety countermeasures that we incorporate into our projects.'
The project originated with the creation of the U.S. Department of Transportation's 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which established the Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) program. SS4A funds regional, local and tribal initiatives to prevent roadway deaths and serious injuries, with $5 billion in appropriated funds for 2022-2026.
According to staff, the total budget for development of the Yuba-Sutter RSAP was $1 million, with $800,000 provided from an SS4A grant. The remaining $200,000 is shared by the participating counties and cities.
Continued grant eligibility is a major driving factor behind creating the RSAP.
'This Regional Safety Action Plan positions us so we can continue to go after future grants,' Peterson said. 'For example, Yuba County will be submitting a grant application on June 26 to implement safety countermeasures…based on the findings of this Regional Safety Action Plan.'
Safety measures were identified through the aforementioned gathered data from 2018-2023. The data used for the RSAP only includes collisions involving a serious or minor injury and/or fatality, said Adrian Engel, principal of the transportation planning and engineering firm Fehr & Peers.
Engel said that in the six-year time frame, the number of injury collisions has remained pretty consistent at just under 1,000 each year across the region. About 150 serious injuries or deaths occur each year from traffic collisions in the region as well.
The data revealed that broadside collisions are the primary cause of local serious injury or fatality collisions, with rear-ending also being common, especially on highways going into the cities.
Unsafe speeding, improper turning, driving under the influence and pedestrian violations were also found to be frequent factors for traffic collision fatalities or injuries in Yuba County.
The data was combined with information collected through community engagement.
'We created a safety task force composed of agency staff and public works, local law enforcement, the school district and local advocates,' Engel said. 'We met a handful of times to discuss the issues and use it as a steering committee for greater community engagement.'
They also conducted four public listening sessions in Yuba City, Live Oak and Wheatland, and created a website where people could report locations where they experience roadway troubles.
'We like to get out into the community to understand maybe places they're avoiding that aren't showing up in the data,' Engel said.
The team then identified several priority corridors in Yuba County for road safety improvements:
North Beale Road/Lindhurst Avenue from Highway 70 ramps to Erle Road
Forty Mile Road from Rancho Road to Plumas Arboga Road
Grove Avenue from Hammonton-Smartsville Road to Shoreline Drive
Hammonton-Smartsville Road from Simpson Lane to Avondale Avenue
McGowan Parkway from the railroad tracks to Powerline Road
Olivehurst Avenue from the Powerline/Chestnut roundabout to Lindhurst Avenue
Plumas Arboga Road from Highway 70 to Forty Mile Road
Simpson Lane from East 10th Street to Hammonton-Smartsville Road
Highway 65 from the Highway 70 divide to Olive Avenue
Highway 70 from Yuba River to Seventh Avenue
Countermeasures implemented will be based on each corridor's specific issues and needs.
'The plan will start to address these issues at a high level, as well as identifying some corridors at a more specific level,' Engel said. 'Many of the countermeasures that we're looking at in terms of the toolbox will look at changing signal timing, increasing the all-red phase and adding dilemma zone detection.'
Signs, road striping, public education and more are included in the RSAP as well, added Peterson.
North Beale Road is set to be the first for improvements. Engel said the other corridors will be addressed as they finalize the plan and secure grant funding.
'The safety planning work for all six agencies is happening concurrently,' Engel said. 'We will have a draft plan for the entire region in the fall.'
Staff will present the RSAP to the board again at the next meeting with a recommendation to adopt it.
'We acknowledge that this is going to be a long-term effort, but it's definitely going to be of value when we go through and prioritize projects and actually scope those projects to incorporate safety countermeasures in the future,' Peterson said.