Santa Ana Pedestrians’ One-Mile Death Row?

A review of more than 300 accidents over the last three years shows that a one-mile stretch of West 1st Street accounts for nearly a fourth of all pedestrian deaths in Santa Ana, a city with the highest pedestrian fatality rate in Southern California.

Despite the accident cluster on 1st Street between Fairview and Bristolstreets, the city has focused little effort on improving road conditions there. Officials maintain that safety measures would be costly and not necessarily effective.

Two years ago, the city actually raised the speed limit along a portion of the route from 35 to 40 mph--a move questioned by residents as well as some police officers.

“I think we kind of shot ourselves in the foot on that,” said Officer Paul Hayes, a member of the city’s Pedestrian Accident Reduction Team. “I think it [the speed limit] should go back down.”

Five pedestrians lost their lives and six have been injured on the stretch of West 1st Street since 1995, according to a Times survey of pedestrian injury reports. They include a 35-year-old man struck by a drunk driver who ran a red light and another unidentified pedestrian who died while jaywalking.

The six-lane road into downtown is so intimidating that some pedestrians dare cross only in groups and firefighters alter their routes when responding to emergency calls.

The portion of West 1st lacks raised medians that traffic engineers have placed elsewhere in the city to reduce pedestrian and car accidents. Officials said they have no plans to install the medians or additional traffic signals, saying they are too expensive and would slow traffic.

The review of accidents across Santa Ana identified West 1st Street as the worst of several areas where pedestrians and cars collide with unusual frequency. A 2 1/2-mile stretch of Bristol Street, for example, has been the site of three pedestrian deaths and 14 injuries. A 2 1/2-mile portion of Main Street has seen one fatality and 12 pedestrian injuries.

City officials said last week that they weren’t aware of the accident clusters on West 1st Street and several other locations and vowed to review safety measures. But they maintain that engineers can do little to improve the situation because the vast majority of the accidents are the fault of pedestrians.

“Based on the cause of accidents, I am not sure we can redesign streets to eliminate” accidents, said Ruth Smith, Santa Ana’s associate traffic engineer. “Even if we put signals on every intersection, we wouldn’t solve the problem.”

Others strongly disagree, complaining that the city has been slow in dealing with pedestrian safety issues and rarely grants requests for new traffic signals and other improvements.

“The city blames the pedestrians for being hit, rather than spending the money to make it a safer community,” said Marti Baker, the principal at Madison Elementary School. For a decade, Baker has unsuccessfully lobbied the city to install a signal in front of the school on Standard Avenue, where two fatal accidents have occurred.

“We believe we should have a traffic light, rather than wait for someone else to get killed,” she said.

Cities Must Weigh Safety Versus Gridlock

City officials said they have been studying traffic around the elementary school in recent months and will decide soon whether to place a signal there.

The problem illustrates the balancing act governments face in trying to protect pedestrians while at the same time avoiding gridlock. It is an issue that’s receiving more attention across the nation as community groups push for changes in existing street designs that they say favor movement of traffic over pedestrian safety.

The issue came into focus earlier this year with a UC Irvine study that found Santa Ana to have the highest pedestrian-death rate in Southern California and the third-highest in the state. So far this year, five pedestrians have lost their lives--one shy of matching the city’s pedestrian death rate for all of last year. More than 300 pedestrians are injured in accidents each year--many of them children and elderly people.

The Santa Ana Police Department in March began a major enforcement effort that includes more jaywalking patrols and a public-education campaign targeting the city’s Latino population. Since the crackdown began, police have issued more than 1,500 jaywalking citations and more than 250 tickets to motorists who failed to yield to pedestrians.

On the dangerous stretch of West 1st Street, the five pedestrian fatalities have a variety of causes, with both drivers and jaywalkers being at fault.

The street carries 30,000 vehicles daily--an average of 20 cars a minute over a 24 hour period. Residents call it inherently dangerous. The wide road is dotted with supermarkets and other businesses that serve a densely populated neighborhood where many residents don’t have cars.

Mothers pushing strollers often break into a run after “Walk” signals begin flashing red. Some people who work on the south side do not dare cross on foot, even to visit the Food 4 Less supermarket across the street.

“I use my car. There’s more protection in a car than walking,” said Alex Velasquez, owner of a 1st Street taco stand whose front gates have been smashed several times by cars that jumped the sidewalk.

Others said they only cross the street in groups. “They [motorists] don’t respect us,” Maria Ponce, who lives nearby, added. “If I’m alone, I have to wait for more people because they don’t stop for just one person.”

Cars drive so fast along portions of West 1st Street that the city in 1997 raised the speed limit from 35 to 40 mph. Officials said they had no choice but to make the change, citing state traffic laws that require limits be set near the speed driven by 85% of the cars.

Critics, however, say the city’s actions don’t make sense. Instead of raising speeds, they argue, Santa Ana should have more aggressively enforced the 35 mph limit.

Moreover, under an exception in the law, officials have the option to maintain the lower speed if the higher rate poses a safety risk. Up to now, the city hasn’t viewed that portion of West 1st Street as meeting the safety exemption.

Many residents say the higher speed limit has made a bad situation even worse.

“It’s crazy here,” said Joe Bonilla, co-owner of El Toro Supermarket. “Look how fast the cars are going. It’s like a freeway.”

The heavy traffic along 1st Street prevents firefighters at one station from making a left turn onto the street--even with sirens blaring. Often, they take a more time-consuming but safer route through side streets until they can make a turn onto 1st Street, according to Capt. Randy Black.

Traffic experts agree that raised traffic medians with landscaping can help reduce pedestrian accidents. The medians serve as a barrier to prevent some people from jaywalking. For those pedestrians who do cross, the medians provide a “safe zone” in the middle of the street.

Raised medians appear to have made a difference on another one-mile stretch of West 1st Street between Bristol and Main streets. The city installed the islands in recent years. This portion of the road recorded no fatal accidents and six injuries during the three-year period.

City officials said it’s too expensive to install medians elsewhere on 1st Street and have no plans to add new crosswalks or traffic signals. Still, city traffic officials say they are trying improve pedestrian safety elsewhere in the city.

In recent years, the city has installed speed humps, notches and other “traffic calming” devices in some neighborhoods where residents have complained about speeding motorists.

Last year, workers removed 40% of the city’s 162 crosswalks that were not at traffic signals. Officials took the action after a study concluded that the crosswalks only served to give pedestrians a false sense of security on heavily traveled roadways.

The city is also considering making another street with a history of pedestrian accidents into a one-way thoroughfare. A three-block stretch of Minnie Street has been the scene of six pedestrian accidents, and officials said making it one-way might reduce traffic flow.

But officials said other streets, like West 1st Street, prove more difficult.

“I wish we could find a quick and easy solution to this problem, but there doesn’t appear to be one,” said Smith, the city traffic engineer.

City Needs to Act, Say 1st Street Walkers

Several outside traffic engineers agreed, noting that the high number of accidents on West 1st Street and elsewhere could just as easily be the result of driver and pedestrian error as of fixable road conditions. “Just putting in a signal or crosswalk doesn’t make accidents go away,” said Rock Miller, a Tustin-based traffic consultant.

However, Arthur L. Anderson, director of the state Office of Traffic Safety, said the situation on West 1st Street merits close attention from city officials. “When you have fatalities, you have to be looking at it,” he said.

Some pedestrian advocates say Santa Ana is typical of suburban cities that emphasize cars over pedestrians. But Santa Ana’s densely populated neighborhoods and unusually large number of pedestrians make the situation worse.

“You shouldn’t get a death sentence for stepping off the curb at the wrong time,” said Laura Olsen, a spokesperson for Surface Transportation Policy Project. “The way we’ve designed communities is not giving pedestrians a fair chance at all.”

Residents who must navigate West 1st Street say they aren’t getting a fair chance and want the city to take action before more pedestrians lose their lives.

“When people cross here, they should be ready to run,” said Francisco Mendoza, a West 1st Street automobile repair shop owner. “And may God be with them.”

Times correspondent Jason Kandel contributed to this report.

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Santa Ana has the highest pedestrian fatality rate in Southern California. Here are the locations of every fatal and injury pedestrian accident in central Santa Ana from October 1995 to September 1998.