The state Department of Transportation and Public Facilities is developing a Highway Safety Improvement Program project that will construct Slow Vehicle Turnouts on the Sterling Highway. The project would add 22 of the turnouts to reduce injuries and fatalities between Soldotna and Bay Crest Hill in Homer.
The proposed turnouts would be the best way to mitigate collisions on the Sterling Highway in the short term, according to a DOT crash pattern analysis done between 2004 and 2008. In those five years, a total of 613 crashes were reported, including six fatalities and almost 200 injuries. Half of the fatal injuries were head-on collisions.
The analysis outlined some of the reasons for those crash statistics, describing what frequent drivers of the highway probably have already observed. From the report: 55-percent of the traffic on the Sterling highway in the summer months is made up of RV’s, delivery trucks, commercial vehicles and vehicles pulling trailers. The mixture of lower speed, ‘sightseeing’, RV and boat hauling drivers with more aggressive weekend fishing trip drivers causes conflict and results in driver impatience, inattention, excessive speed, improper passing fatigue and more. The situation becomes more complex in the summer months when as many 7,000 vehicles travel that stretch of highway each day. In the winter months, that number drops to about 2,500.
Part of the problem is too many drivers traveling at different speeds, but on top of that, the report recognized a total lack of dedicated passing lanes and slow vehicle turnouts, or SVT’s, on the 72 miles of highway that was analyzed.
The solution proposed by DOT is the installation of 22 SVT’s. The analysis said passing lanes would be desirable, there are simply too few one-mile stretches of highway that don’t involve wetlands or visibility constraints. The department used a set of five criteria to determine placement of the turnouts. They will be placed according to where they would provide the most benefit, where sight distance is available for slow vehicles to reenter the highway, at or near where crashes have occurred, where there are no apparent environmental impacts or utility issues and where turnouts or passing lanes could be constructed with minimal widening of the roadway.
The department cites a National Cooperative Highway Research Program report that suggests a reduction in all fatal and injurious crashes of forty-percent, and reduction in all crashes of thirty-percent. Incidents where a vehicle runs off the road is the type of crash that would be most susceptible to correction with the SVT’s. Head on, rear end and lane-changing crashes are also anticipated to be reduced.
A series of public meetings is scheduled for later this month beginning at Homer Middle School on November 27th, Ninilchik School the following day and Tustumena Elementary on November 29th. All meetings will be from 4 pm to 7 pm. The project is scheduled to begin next year.
Shaylon Cochran is a host and reporter at KDLL in Kenai. He’s reported on fishing, energy, agriculture and local politics since coming to Alaska in 2011. He has worked at KDLL/KBBI on the Kenai Peninsula, where he picked up lots of new hobbies, like smoking salmon, raising chickens, skiing and counting RV’s. He holds a bachelors degree in Journalism from Iowa State University.
