After 23 years, Oregon Department of Transportation crews are taking down signs that designated 10 miles of U.S. Highway 20 east of Toledo as a traffic safety corridor.
The agency said this week that the number of vehicle crashes with fatal or serious injuries in that area had dropped below the threshold to continue qualifying as a safety corridor. It is one of five current safety corridors and becomes the 17th corridor to be decommissioned since the program began in 1989, ODOT said in a news release announcing the change.
To qualify as a safety corridor, the average fatal and serious injury crash rate must be higher than 150 percent that of similar roads statewide. The U.S. 20 corridor rate is currently 133 percent.
Some of those decommissioned corridors had only been in place for three or four years before crash rates improved to the point that ODOT decided to remove it. That wasn’t the case for the section of U.S. 20 between Toledo and Chitwood.
“We looked at taking away the safety corridor before, and the crash rate had gone back up, which doesn’t typically happen,” said ODOT spokesperson Angela Beers-Sydel told Oregon Public Broadcasting. “And so we took some more measures, we worked with the communities, and now we feel like it’s time.”
The Highway 20 safety corridor was established in 1999. Some 6,500 vehicles use that section of the highway daily, according to ODOT traffic counts.
ODOT said as of Tuesday, Dec. 6, all safety corridor signs, including the fines double warnings, will be removed. Traffic violation fines will no longer be doubled in the area once signs are removed. Historically, ODOT said, crash rates do not increase after a safety corridor is decommissioned.
Improvements to Highway 20 since 1999 include:
- The massive Pioneer Mountain to Eddyville projectbetween milepost 14 and 24 that created 5.5 miles of new road, bypassing a 10-mile section of the original alignment of U.S. 20 built in 1917;
- Repaved 11 miles of highway between Newport and Simpson Creek in 2003, incorporating safety improvements;
- Updated curve warning signs and conducted a public education program;
- Increased traffic enforcementthrough grants to pay for overtime patrols: and
- Highway sign, pavement marking, and reflector improvementsto better direct and control traffic.
