Too many traffic deaths on Highway 273 from Redding to Anderson: What can be done?

California traffic agencies want public input on a project designed to reduce deadly crashes and improve motorist and pedestrian access along Highway 273 ― a main thoroughfare known for its serious traffic collisions, including two that killed pedestrians last year.

Through their Envision 273 plan, transportation officials want to survey residents as part of a larger project to improve safety on the 16.6-mile-long highway, the site of high numbers of vehicle collisions and pedestrian traffic deaths.

While it travels through residential and business areas and gets heavy pedestrian use, Highway 273 drives “like a freeway” between Redding and Anderson because it was built like one, said Senior Transportation Manager Michael Kuker at the Shasta Regional Transportation Agency.

Sections of the highway are long and straight, leading from north Redding near Twin View Boulevard to south Anderson. It quickly changes from open road to urban street, allowing motorists to go too fast in city settings, transportation officials said.

From 2011 to 2020, 28% of all fatal crashes that happened on Shasta County highways — including those involving a pedestrian or someone on a bike ― occurred on Highway 273, according to Chris Woodward, spokesman for the California Department of Transportation.

At least three of Shasta County's 12 traffic-related deaths in 2023 happened on Highway 293, according to law enforcement reports. That includes two people walking along the highway who were killed after being struck by vehicles. The two unrelated incidents happened a half mile from each other, within a 12-hour window, on Sept. 8 and 9.

Shasta and Butte counties had the highest number of traffic-related deaths in the North State over the past five years, according to U.C. Berkeley’s Transportation Injury Mapping System. That's due in part to their population size and status as urban centers that attract travelers from surrounding rural communities.

In Shasta County, 152 people died in automobile collision-related deaths between 2019 and 2023, according to U.C. Berkeley: 32 to 37 deaths per year, except in 2023 when the number dipped to 12.

The Envision 273 effort will address long-term infrastructure improvements “that support safety and mobility for everyone, beginning with an understanding of our local challenges and needs,” according to the project’s description.

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Planners hope to make the road safer and more accessible to pedestrians, and make it easier for motorists to safely navigate onto the highway and off onto side streets, according to the Envision 273 plan.

Launched in February 2023, Envision 273 is in its early stages of data collection and public input. Planners hosted two community workshops last year to gather feedback and share ideas with people who drive, shop or live near the highway.

These helped planners understand the community's broad concerns about safety, Kuker said.

In 2024, planners will host another two workshops some time in October to look at more specific solutions to problems people raised in 2023, Kuker said.

Another part of Envision 273's public outreach is a survey asking people answer questions about their comfort levels driving and walking on different sections of the highway.

The Shasta Regional Transportation Agency and partnering organizations including Caltrans will report public feedback and propose solutions at the end of 2024.

Highway 273 traffic-related deaths are nothing new

High death tolls from Highway 273 crashes have been an ongoing problem for decades as Redding has expanded around the road, according to Kuker.

The highway cuts through the same territory it did when it was constructed over the Old Highway 99 route in 1967, Woodward and Kuker said. Rural land surrounded much of the highway then, especially in what is now south Redding and Anderson.

Many of the highway’s turnoffs to side roads leading to business districts, residences and motels weren’t there in the 1960s and '70s, Kuker said.

Over the past several decades, "the city has grown up around" Highway 273, with traffic moving faster through what are now urban zones. “Despite significant changes in land use and population along (Highway 273), the transportation facility remains largely unchanged," Kuker said.

More: Here's why this stretch of Highway 273 in Redding is getting a makeover

While causes of traffic collisions vary, “many incidents” on the Highway 273 corridor are “due to individuals on foot or other modes of transportation accessing the roadway in an unsafe manner,” Woodward said.

It’s not that there are more collisions on Highway 273, it's that the crashes there tend to be more serious, Redding Police Sgt. Mark Montgomery said in 2018. Speed limits along stretches of Highway 273 reach 60 mph, then turn into city streets with stoplights and pedestrian crossings. That's what makes the highway dangerous, he said.

More than half of Shasta County's fatal or injury-causing traffic crashes were "speed related," according to a 2018 California Office of Traffic Safety study. Caltrans project manager Eric Orr warned that the highway’s transition from expressway to main street, as well as people driving too fast on the road, were partly to blame for the road's high death toll.

To read more about Envision 273 and take the survey, go to ghd.mysocialpinpoint.com/envision273.

To read more about projects along Highway 273, go to U.C. Berkeley's south Market Street report at shastalivingstreets.org.

Jessica Skropanic is a features reporter for the Record Searchlight/USA Today Network. She covers science, arts, social issues and news stories. Follow her on Twitter @RS_JSkropanic and on Facebook. Join Jessica in the Get Out! Nor Cal recreation Facebook group. To support and sustain this work, please subscribe today. Thank you.

This article originally appeared on Redding Record Searchlight: Highway 273 traffic planners aim to make Redding-Anderson loop safer