Safety Campaign Will Target Drivers Along Dangerous Highway

As summer looms, and with it the threat of more wrecks along “Blood Alley,” officials are planning to blitz vacation-bound motorists with speed-tracking airplanes, cautionary billboards and highway-safety leaflets along the dangerous stretch of California 126.

The accident rate is already down on the deceptively pretty road between Fillmore and Santa Clarita, after a rash of 11 fatalities in five weeks last winter prompted beefed-up police patrols and perked-up driver awareness.

Officials met in Fillmore on Thursday and laid plans to make California 126 even safer before Memorial Day weekend, when Blood Alley begins filling with carefree and sometimes clueless tourists.

“We had reports from around the table from Caltrans and the Highway Patrol, and they all are very positive,” Ventura County Supervisor Kathy Long said after a meeting of the safety task force, which was set up earlier this year after the Highway 126 death toll peaked.

“All the signage and extra control [by CHP officers] has paid off.”

CHP Officer David Cockrill said the accident rate has dropped. While the period November through January saw at least 11 fatalities and numerous noninjury accidents, there has been only one fatality in nine injury crashes and 28 fender-benders from February through April, he said.

By June, however, the CHP plans to start flying over California 126 and clocking speeders between lines they plan to have painted on the roadway later this month, Long said.

Next week, officials plan to unveil a public-awareness campaign of brochures, car litter bags and other advertisements warning motorists to “Stay Alive on This Beautiful Drive,” she said.

“We want to give them a list of things to do, some cautionary things like ‘Buckle up,’ ‘Don’t drink when you drive’ and ‘Be patient,’ ” she said. “It’s a very handy brochure we’re going to make available at gas stations or places where people will stop and visit.”

Meanwhile, work to widen the dangerously narrow two-lane blacktop to four broad lanes is moving ahead of schedule--and will possibly be finished by next winter, Caltrans officials said.

After shifting water pipes and power lines out of the way, highway workers plan to resume on Monday the massive paving project to widen Highway 126 east of Piru, Caltrans officials said.

This phase of paving will last two weeks, Patricia Reid, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Transportation, said Thursday.

But a project to widen the entire 5.4-mile section of road from two to four lanes between Piru and the Los Angeles County border might last into January, depending on how fast crews can work, Reid said.

When the paving is done, workers will shut down one side of the road, letting eastbound traffic alternate with westbound traffic through the work zone, so they can repaint stripes on the road, she said. Motorists can expect periodic delays while the restriping is being done, she said.

Work on the $11.4-million road-widening contract began in December 1995, partly in response to the high number of accidents along the route.

Meanwhile, widening work is continuing on another section, the strip of California 126 between Fillmore and Powell Road.

“We hope to have that contract complete by the end of the year,” Reid said.