Saratoga News

Highway 85 median barriers coming soon

By Sarah Lombardo

Barriers may appear along the entire length of the Highway 85 median sooner than planned.

Paul Hensley, Caltrans district division chief of operations, said plans for the barriers are being given top priority.

"We are fast-tracking the project," Hensley said. "We're now looking to have [the barriers up] by the first of the year. Under our normal process, we would have only started it at the first of the year."

After a number of accidents along the highway, Caltrans is not the only agency looking to make the stretch of road safer.

The Saratoga City Council has given its support to the California Highway Patrol to use radar as a means of reducing speed on Highway 85. In a 2-1 vote at its Aug. 7 meeting, councilmembers authorized Mayor Paul Jacobs to write a letter of support to the CHP.

"I am supporting this because I think we have a problem with excessive speed on 85," Councilmember Ann Marie Burger said, "and I think that if you speed, you ought to be caught and pay the piper."

Jacobs said he also supported the use of radar because he felt the current speed limit was fast enough for drivers. "It seems to me that 65 or 68 or 70 miles an hour is fast enough for anybody," he said. "I think as all of us have observed on the roads, there are people traveling at 80 and 85 and faster simply because we've upped the speed limit to 65 ... and I think it's appropriate to do what we can to bring down speeds to the lawful level."

Councilmember Karen Tucker voted against the use of radar on 85. "I am not in favor of it," she said. "I think it's primarily a ploy to fatten the state coffers with more tickets."

CHP spokesman John Maxfield said the public need not worry about the department getting rich on speeding tickets. "When the CHP writes a ticket, we don't get any money from that," he said.

Maxfield said that if the use of radar was a ploy to put more money in the pockets of the state, radar might be used more often. But it's not.

"The only other area highway in the state where radar is used is near Truckee, so this is a new thing for us," Maxfield said. "The sole reason we want to do this is to reduce the number of accidents along that freeway."

The CHP began asking for support for radar from cities that run along Highway 85 shortly after the July 25 accident that killed four people, including unborn twins who were delivered by emergency Caesarean section, their mother and the driver of another vehicle.

The latest accident on Highway 85 occurred on Aug. 7 and involved the driver of a pickup truck traveling more than 80 miles per hour. Witnesses told officers that Cindy Valencia of Morgan Hill was using the car pool lane and median to pass vehicles in the northbound lanes. After exchanging gestures with Mark Carillo of San Jose, who was also traveling in the northbound lanes, their two trucks sideswiped and Valencia swerved across the median into oncoming traffic. Valencia's pickup struck head-on a pickup belonging to Steven Hoffman of Fremont. Valencia received a head injury, and none of the other people involved, including Valencia's 18-year-old son, Robert, required treatment.

In the last 15 months, there have been eight accidents on Highway 85, and six people have been killed. Hensley said that although few of those accidents have been attributed to speed, he felt radar use on 85, in addition to the median barriers, would help reduce the accident rate.

"I think it will have a very positive effect," he said.