This blog post about Otis Drive in Alameda practically wrote itself while I was on the way to the supermarket yesterday morning.

I hopped in one of our cars, drove some blocks, and eventually found myself on Otis Drive heading toward one of big-box shopping centers.

🚲

I can fit a week's worth of groceries onto my electric cargo bike. But the experience of riding to South Shore Center, navigating its parking lots, and then locking up my bike outdoors in such a busy place is just not that enjoyable. Using our car to make the trip feels simpler and safer, even though it pains me to use a car to go ~2 miles.

As I approached the intersection of Otis and Broadway, I could see a delay ahead. Two drivers had opened their doors, were taking pictures of each other's cars and handing papers to each other. As they and their vehicles sat in the single thru lane, the rest of us in our own cars paused and waited to get around them using other lanes. As I inched ahead, I used the moment to snap a pic:

Otis Drive westbound at Broadway this morning at 9:30 a.m.

No police were on-site. So the CHP isn't going to aggregate this collision into its SWITRS (Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System). The OTS (California Office of Traffic Safety) will not then add this into the TIMS (Transportation Injury Mapping System) that it sponsors. Therefore, Caltrans will never know...

🧑‍💻

The more significant crash at Otis/Broadway on the evening of September 8 did have police on-site, so records will likely traverse all of those data systems. It will take at least a year until it becomes available to the public to find on the TIMS web maps and analysis interface.)

... and yet a crash did actually happen in the real world yesterday morning. It looked like an annoyance to those two motorists, it was a minor annoyance to a couple dozen other people in our cars waiting to navigate around it, and it was a small but still meaningful safety hazard to have cars stopped and people walking in the roadway.

The TOAR report commissioned by Caltrans specifically concluded on page 19 that a road diet along SR-61 would reduce this exact type of hurry! hurry! make the light! never mind... brake! driving experience that can lead to fender benders at the signalized intersections along Otis Drive.

🚗

Recall that the TOAR report also suggested that a road diet would ease the experience of drivers entering or crossing Otis Drive at unsignalized intersections, where car-on-car collisions also currently occur.

Is Caltrans going to follow the advice of their own consultants?

Or will they at least go ask those two motorists who were stopped along Otis Drive yesterday morning if they would have traded a few seconds delay (as Caltrans consultants estimate would be added on average by a road diet) for significantly lowering the odds of the hassle, embarrassment, and cost of that fender bender?

✉️

Are you also frustrated by Caltrans's insistence that Otis Drive cannot and will not be improved? If so, please use this email template to send an email to the director of Caltrans Bay Area District 4.

Saturday morning along Otis Drive (Caltrans SR-61)