Easy does it at crowded interchange
Garces Circle soon will be all square with lane changes
Making something better does not necessarily make it easier to use, as demonstrated by ongoing roadwork at Bakersfield’s Garces Circle.
The interchange has long been one of the city’s hot spots for fender benders. In the last six years, the roundabout has been the site of 17 traffic accidents, 70% of which resulted in minor injuries, according to the Kern Council of Governments.
City government and Caltrans worked together for years to come up with a plan for not only improving the look of the intersection but also making it safer by slowing down the speed at which motorists can navigate it.
Among many changes entering final stages of construction are traffic lanes. Instead of allowing vehicles to travel as many as three abreast around the circle, there’s now room for only two — or one, in some sections — the idea being that drivers have to slow down.
Lately, though, drivers have found the transition a little jolting. Or a lot jolting.
Alex Rivera at A&R Auto Repair knows this because, from the shop’s customer service desk, he watches motorists trying to negotiate the circle’s narrower roadway. He said Tuesday the rate of accidents at the interchange has increased noticeably and now averages four to five per week, by his estimate.
It happens mostly when people try to merge onto Golden State Highway, he said.
“There used to be more room,” he said. “They made the lanes smaller.”
A construction inspector contracted by the city to watch over the project, Mark Fick, said he has noticed problems, too, but not the one Rivera mentioned. Fick said he has recently seen drivers approach the roundabout, which is designed to run counter-clockwise, and instead try to drive it clockwise.
“We’ve seen half a dozen people do it,” Fick said. And not just that, he added: “They’ve run through road-closed signs. I mean, everything.”
All that should soon come to an end with new lane-striping and directional markers to go on top of asphalt applied just last week, he said. There will also be lots of new signs and lights, he added.
“That’ll control the traffic a lot better,” he said of the striping work scheduled to begin Wednesday.
“When they see the two lanes,” he added, “I think they’re going to slow down a little bit.”
Other changes underway or finished at the Garces Circle since late April include flashing beacons at pedestrian crosswalks, portions of cobblestone and landscaping that will consist of boulders, trees, shrubs and decomposed granite.
Additionally, wrought-iron fences
will be put up in front of two new murals that artists selected for the job expect to begin work on as soon as Saturday. The whole $3.2 million effort — actually, two separate but coordinated projects by the city and Caltrans — is expected to be finished in early October.
Executive Director Ahron Hakimi at Kern COG, one of the region’s senior transportation planners, drove the circle several times on Monday to get a sense of how the improvements will play out. It looked to him like vehicle speeds through the roundabout will be reduced and that safety will increase for all travelers: pedestrians, motorists, bicycles and people in wheelchairs alike.
What probably won’t happen, he said, is greater traffic.
“Even though speeds will be lower for vehicles, the facility will allow for the free flow of all users through the circle,” he said. “No increased congestion is expected.”