New hope for end to Hwy. 46 carnage will stop
Impatient drivers making stupid mistakes are to blame for Highway 46's "Blood Alley" reputation. But the design of the two-lane state highway, particularly the stretch of roadway in western Kern County, provides nearly no margin for error.
It's a familiar sight to anyone who has driven from Bakersfield to the Central Coast along Highway 46. Traffic backs up behind a slow-moving truck. Drivers become impatient. They pull into the opposing lane to pass. They meet a fast-moving, oncoming car. The horrendous wrecks that have occurred, most of them fatal head-on collisions, have outraged this community for decades. They have also fueled a years-long campaign by Kern County residents and their elected officials to widen the state highway that winds through the flatlands and over the mountains to the Central Coast.
Oddly, as you cross over the Kern County line into San Luis Obispo County, Highway 46 noticeably improves. That portion of the state highway has more lanes and safety features -- the result of highway dollars that have not been spent in Kern County (not the least significant of which are self-help dollars accrued through a sales tax add-ons which Kern voters continue to reject).
But next week, just days after seven more people were slaughtered on Highway 46, we finally have hope that the carnage will eventually ease. Caltrans contractors will break ground on the first phase of a project to widen Highway 46 from a two-lane to a four-lane road. The project includes a generous median strip to separate opposite-direction traffic. The largest single source of money for the widening project came from federal legislation passed in 2005, for which we can credit now- retired Bakersfield Republican Congressman Bill Thomas.
The nearly $90 million for the Highway 46 widening was part of more than $700 million in federal road funding that Thomas corralled for a collection of Bakersfield and Kern County projects. But long before Thomas came to the rescue, then-Assemblyman Dean Florez, now a state senator, began hammering away at state highway officials to improve Highway 46. The freshman Democratic lawmaker from Shafter picked up a chant that got started on this editorial page: Fix 46! That cry -- ignited by the gruesome 1999 head-on that severely injured four members of the Waski family of Bakersfield and killed Bakersfield resident Michelle Phillips -- reverberated in frequent editorials and in readers' letters.
Florez emblazoned the chant on T-shirts and held rallies. He teamed up with his Republican colleague, now state Sen. Roy Ashburn of Bakersfield, to remove environmental hurdles to speed up the highway's widening. And while state dollars fell short of "fixing 46," interim safety features were added and traffic enforcement was beefed up. Local road funds were also used to keep the project alive and ready when the Thomas funds became available.
Next week's groundbreaking ceremony is a testimonial to the perseverance of Florez, Thomas, this newspaper and the community they collectively serve.
