Caltrans Rejects Barriers on Highway 126 : Safety: County believes center dividers would reduce casualties on dangerous stretch. State sees potential new hazard.

Alarmed by the death rate along a dangerous stretch of California 126, city and county leaders Friday faced off against the state Department of Transportation over whether installing concrete center dividers would ease the problem.

Officials from throughout the county have endorsed a proposal to place the barriers along perilous sections of the roadway.

But Caltrans flatly rejected the plan at Friday’s meeting of the Ventura County Transportation Commission, telling the panel that although barriers would prevent head-on collisions, they would increase other types of accidents.

Over the past five years, there have been 1,168 accidents and 29 people have died along the winding stretch between Ventura and the Los Angeles County line east of Fillmore.

But in a verbal report to the commission, Caltrans spokesman Steve Leung said the dividers would create a new set of traffic hazards.

“The barriers would stop vehicles from crossing over” into oncoming traffic, but “the blunt ends of the barriers would create a dangerous object for people to hit,” Leung said. “If someone can come up with the facts and prove to us that concrete barriers are the best solution, we are ready and willing to discuss it.”

The commission reacted angrily to the report, saying it is up to Caltrans to provide information about the feasibility of installing barriers and accusing the agency of stubbornly resisting their plea without giving it full consideration.

“Nothing you have shown us today convinces us” that barriers would not reduce the fatality rate, said Commissioner David Smith, who also serves as a Camarillo city councilman. “I don’t believe that you have the information that says if we put barriers in it will be worse. I’m not convinced.”

Leung suggested a list of alternatives to the barriers, among them posting signs along the roadway cautioning motorists to drive carefully, stepping up efforts to have drivers turn on their headlights during the day and increasing law enforcement to nab speeders and drunk drivers.

Leung reminded the commission that road-widening projects are scheduled for the next several years on two narrow, accident-prone strips of the highway. He recommended that a task force be formed to address the safety problem and suggested that the county consider eventually transforming the highway into a freeway because freeways are generally safer.

Commission Executive Director Ginger Gherardi bristled at Leung’s suggestions, saying the role of the proposed task force was already being performed by the commission and that making California 126 a freeway would “heap a host of environmental problems” on the county, “not to mention funding.”

Roger Campbell, a Fillmore city councilman who is spearheading the effort to install median barriers, harshly criticized Leung’s report.

“It is really clear to us that you started out with the premise ‘We’re not going to do this,’ ” Campbell said. “I see a lot of conflict in what you’re telling us. In fact, you’re not giving (the commission) enough information to make a factual decision.”

The commission directed Caltrans to research the matter more carefully and return with a beefed-up report in January.

Commissioners said they want Caltrans to tell them the type of accidents that occur when dividers are installed, whether the number of fatalities would fall if medians are installed and what sections of the highway would be conducive to barriers.

The most recent fatal crash on California 126 occurred in October, when two men were killed and three others injured in a head-on collision near Fish Hatchery Road.

On Thanksgiving Day in 1988, seven people died in a gruesome crash, including a family of five traveling from Orange County to visit friends in Santa Paula.