Caltrans Yields to Lassen County’s Threat to Secede

Caltrans, in response to a threat by frustrated Lassen County leaders to secede from California and join Nevada, agreed Wednesday to install new safety measures on U.S. 395 in rural northeastern California.

State transportation department officials said they will establish a trial “daylight test section” along part of the 60-mile-long, two-lane road between the Lassen County seat, Susanville, and Hallelujah Junction near the state line, where the highway widens to four lanes.

In a daylight test section, drivers are asked but not required to turn on their cars’ headlights during the day to make the vehicles more visible while passing.

Al Phillips, Caltrans district director for that region, said he will meet with Susanville officials next Wednesday to work out when and where the test section will be set up. The cost of the two-year-long test section, he said, will be “nominal.”

Jack Pastor, president of the Lassen County Chamber of Commerce, said he is “pleased but not satisfied.” He and others in the big but sparsely populated county last month floated the notion of quitting California for Nevada in hopes that Nevada officials could be more cooperative in highway improvements.

Although California state officials scoffed at the idea, it attracted a lot of publicity. Caltrans officials conceded that the attention played a role in their decision, even though one spokesman complained that the agency always has tried to be helpful.

Still, Lassen civic leaders were reserved.

“It’s certainly a step in the right direction,” Pastor said, “but it is not a long-term solution. Our goal is still to get four lanes” all the way between Susanville and the closest big city, Reno, 87 miles away.

Caltrans officials said again that a four-lane highway is not economically justified.

Indeed, Caltrans spokesman Gene Berthelsen in Sacramento said U.S. 395 “is safer than most two-lane roads in California and carries less traffic.” He and others at Caltrans said they are skeptical that a test section will prevent many accidents on the highway, where 313 crashes have taken 16 lives and injured 218 people in the last two years.

He said seven of the eight 1985 deaths were due to drunk drivers “and in none of those cases would a daylight test section have made a difference.”

“The jury is still out on this kind of concept,” said Phillips, Caltrans regional director in Redding. “It does not necessarily increase safety.”

However, he said the success of test sections depends in part on the degree of cooperation by local drivers. The people of Lassen County, he said, appear to be well-motivated.