Highway 26 safety project takes off in Othello
CUTLINE: The intersection of Highway 26 and Highway 17, formerly known as Killer Corner, was site of many traffic accidents until a few years ago. However, the accidents have continued in other areas of Highway 26, which has led to the creation of a safety project in order to educate people, improve road conditions and curtail crashes and fatalities.
State road scene of countless accidents in past three years
Roadway safety is set to take center stage in the Basin once again.
A 19.8 mile stretch of State Route 26 has been designated a corridor by the Washington Traffic Safety Commission, which means that that particular part of the road has been deemed extremely dangerous.
In this case, the Highway 26 corridor stretches from the Grant County line on the west to Irby Road on the east, leaving Othello close to being the corridor's midpoint.
LuAnn Bordi, a reporter for the Othello newspaper The Outlook said that a group called the Highway 26 Traffic Safety Project has begun work on the corridor hoping to curb an alarming trend of speeding, drunk driving and subsequent accidents.
Though still on the planning stages, the group has met a couple of times already, putting together a plan of action to bring down the statistics in the near future.
Detective Nels Larson from the Othello Police Department said that the group is identifying problem areas and issues at the moment.
"When a project starts, you get a core group of people and you analyse what the causes are of what is happening," he said, adding that these meetings are taking place between two to three months before the target date for the official kick-off of the project in September.
"Then, we will let people know what the problems are and what actions are being taken," he said.
For Bordi, the status of corridor is warranted, saying that the traffic accidents on SR-26 have turned into a big problem. She added that there were 98 crashes from Jan. 2000 to Jan. 2003, several of which resulted in fatalities.
What makes the situation so dire is the fact that the amount of collisions and fatalities more than double the average for the north-central region of Washington state, Larson said.
With the type of roadway it is, with its side entrances it makes it hard for locals to get on the roadway during big traffic peaks," he said.
The issue is twofold, she said, split between drunk drivers and speeding motorists. Most of the former are local drivers, while the speedsters tend to come to or from the Pullman campus of Washington State University.
The awareness of the public is a big part of the SR-26 corridor project. Educating people, particularly migrant and seasonal workers that use the highway, will be a big part of the efforts.
Some other tasks include working on the intersections on the highway. "They are really bad," she said. "They have no lightning, no turn lanes and many blind spots."
Highway 26 is crisscrossed by another troubling roadway, State Route 17, whose own corridor project ended late last year, and where Bordi participated as well.
Despite recent fatalities on SR-17, Bordi believes that things can improve for SR-26, the way she said improved for the former highway thanks to the project.
"I still see a lot of positive changes on SR-17," she said. "That was an 80-mile-an-hour highway before the corridor, and we did manage to decrease the speed on the highway."
Regarding the crashes on SR-17, she said that some of the reasons had been medical-related or alcohol-related, and that those things are going to happen "no matter how much we educate people."
The intersection of both highways used to carry the moniker of Killer Corner for decades, Bordi remembers.
"It was the only stop sign between Vantage and Pullman," she said. "People would speed and not expect a stop sign, so they would end up (crashing). It is safe now, with the overpass, but at one point it was not."
There is still plenty of work to do at other intersections, Bordi said, such as Reynolds and SR-26 and the cross of SR-26 and Othello's First Avenue.
"We have traffic coming out of town and meeting that high-speed traffic on the highway," she said. "People tell law enforcement officers that it feels like they are being pushed."
That is one of the areas where some strides have been made with re-striping done on the corner of the intersection. Other areas include radio ads at Hispanic stations, as well as signs warning people of upcoming left turns, "so people know where to slow down," she said.
Bordi remains optimistic despite the dauinting task ahead, sayingn that once people start becoming more aware and SR-26 starts receiving some of the planned improvements, it will make a difference.
"Even if we save one or two lives, we will have done our job," she said.