One of Durango’s busiest throughways, South Camino del Rio, has historically earned complaints from motorists about the safety of its intersections.
But an inspection of data collected before and after the Colorado Department of Transportation upgraded several area turn signals in 2011 show motor vehicle crashes caused by left-hand turns have gone down at some of the corridor’s most wreck-prone intersections.
A fatal crash in June 2011 at the Walmart intersection on Camino del Rio expedited CDOT’s installation of protected left-turn signals that require oncoming traffic to stop before cars are allowed to make left turns.
The department also installed flashing yellow turn signals in left-turn lanes at 18 intersections in the Durango area.
The Durango Herald looked at numbers recorded where Camino del Rio/U.S. Highway 160 intersect with Santa Rita Drive, County Road 210 (Office Depot), Sawyer Drive (The Durango Mall), Dominguez Drive (Walmart) and River Road (Home Depot).
From 2007 through 2010, there were 48 crashes recorded collectively at those intersections, excluding crashes in which an impaired driver was the cause.
But after the flashing yellow signals were installed, from 2012 through 2015 – the most current data available – crashes at these five intersections totaled 30, which reflects a 37.5 percent decrease.
The Sawyer Drive intersection, however, is an unexplained outlier. There, crashes have gone up, which prompted CDOT to upgrade the signals so that cars can only turn left with a green light; the yellow arrow permitting turns at the driver’s discretion is in use only at night.
This change was made in mid-2015, and while CDOT recorded no crashes at that intersection in the second half of that year, the department does not have sufficient data to gauge the effectiveness of the signal change.
It’s a busy intersection, but it’s unclear why Sawyer Drive is a challenge, said Tommy Humphrey, CDOT traffic and safety program engineer.
In addition, data kept by the county road and bridge department points to other trouble spots in the Durango area, including the Camino del Rio corridor north of the U.S. Highway 160/U.S. Highway 550 intersection to 14th street where Camino del Rio and Main Avenue merge. There were more than 125 intersection-related crashes within that corridor between 2011 and 2014.
“We want to have zero crashes, but there is still the factor of human behavior,” said CDOT spokeswoman Lisa Schwantes.
The department continues to make improvements throughout the county and region.
In September 2016, the U.S. Highway 550 intersection at Trimble Lane 10 miles north of town was upgraded with a flashing yellow left-turn arrow at the turn signal, though historically, the intersection has not been an above-average problem. Since 2011, there have been three crashes at the intersection.
“It’s a safety precaution, because as traffic volume continues to increase, when an intersection gets busy enough, it can become a problem,” Humphrey said.
CDOT also identified the area where 11th and 12th streets intersect with Camino del Rio, near Backcountry Experience and the pedestrian crosswalk, as one of its projects for future improvements. It’s unclear what the cost will be or how much grant money will be available, but the department intends to raise the median strips to help keep traffic in line.
jpace@durangoherald.com
