City, state address pedestrian safety in the capital region

A plan for improved traffic safety was already in the works when two youths lost their lives in January. Transportation officials were developing a Local Road Safety Plan (LRSP) when, according to preliminary reports, 10-year-old Ella Márquez Conchas was hit by a Ford pickup on Highway 50 near the intersection of Highlands Drive on Jan. 23. She had been with her uncle trying to cross the highway in Mound House after buying candy from a nearby store, family members previously told the Appeal. That store, Red Rock Liquor, sits like an outpost on the north side of the highway, while the residential development where Ella lived sits clustered on the south side. There is no crosswalk connecting the two sides.

Less than a week later, 14-year-old Lexi Rodriguez died after being hit by a car at Nye Lane and North Carson Street. The following month, both deadly intersections were included in the LRSP along with other intersections and roadways in the Carson Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (CAMPO) region that includes northern Douglas County, western Lyon County and Carson City.

“I would say it’s definitely been on the city’s radar for a while, and we have been taking actions,” said Carson City Transportation Manager Chris Martinovich, who also works as the administrator for CAMPO.

Martinovich hopes the LRSP will create opportunities for pedestrian safety improvements in the CAMPO region and funding opportunities for those improvements, he told the Appeal in an April 5 interview. A draft of the LRSP plan will be presented to the CAMPO board in a special meeting 5 p.m. April 29 in the board room of the Carson City Community Center, 851 E. William St.

“It opens the door to Highway Safety Improvement Program funds, HSIP,” Martinovich said. “And HSIP funds can be used on any type of road, including local, which is not the case for all federal dollars, but you have to have a plan in place to be able to receive those funds … That’s a formula funding that NDOT gets each year from the Federal Highway Administration. We don’t necessarily get that. We have to ask. And if they have available (funds), and if our projects are important enough, then they would help us get that funding through them. But it’s not a guaranteed fund.”

The LRSP also opens federal funding from Safe Streets and Roads for All, or SS4A, Martinovich said.

“It’s a new fund that was created under the infrastructure law, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, that is specifically for local agencies and metropolitan planning organizations to seek out federal funding for vulnerable road users,” he said. “Without a plan like this we are not eligible to receive those funds or even apply for that grant.”

Outside of funding, the LRSP and other plans like the Safe Routes to School Master Plan identify what Martinovich referred to as data-driven solutions, “those system-wide concepts that could be applied at multiple locations.”

“One thing I’ve said in the past is we want to make sure we’re not going to do the wrong solution and make it worse,” Martinovich said. “So, part of the effort that we study is finding out what the right solution is for that individual location. Putting a traffic signal or putting a stop sign or putting a flashing beacon is appropriate for some places, and it may not be appropriate for other places. We’re very careful in terms of making sure we’re not going to cause new problems by trying to solve other problems.”

Martinovich, a 2004 Carson High grad, may be better known for discussing Carson City road funding problems in front of the Board of Supervisors or at Regional Transportation Commission meetings as road funding is an issue that dominates public discourse. But pedestrian safety — not unrelated to road funding — affects both his public life as transportation manager and his private life as Carson City resident.

“As a resident, I love to walk where the sidewalk is slightly away from traffic. Even if there is a two- or three-foot little buffer, it just makes the walk so much more enjoyable. Really any place like that,” he said. “If there’s a lot of traffic buzzing by, any place like that, I just really prefer not to walk there unless I really have to.”

Martinovich said there is more demand now from people wanting walk, bike or use other modes of transportation besides cars.

“In the history of transportation, there is a lot of focus on vehicle use. There’s a lot of history there going back to the Interstate Highway Act. More recently, there has been a focus on thinking about all users. That doesn’t just mean vehicles. It means transit too. It means walking; it means biking; it means any form of transportation along any street and accommodating those uses in a safe manner,” he said.

In Carson, Martinovich worries about areas of the city that don’t have sidewalks, like sections between Stewart and Roop streets that have houses and businesses. He said the city tries to include pedestrian improvements as part of larger road projects.

“An example would be Colorado Street,” he said. “There were a number of identified deficiencies on Colorado Street in the Safe Routes to School Master Plan, and we took the opportunity, while redoing the pavement, while redoing the utilities, to combine those safety improvements at the same time and put in the buffered bike lane and put in some of the other median islands to enhance crosswalk safety in that location.”

The city is making progress in other areas using a concept known as “Complete Streets,” which incorporates pedestrian improvements and features for other vulnerable road users. The $19 million South Carson Complete Streets project was completed in 2021. The Appeal could not find any records of pedestrian fatalities on the new multiuse path between Clearview and Fairview drives, which, running parallel on the east side of South Carson, is protected from the road by a landscaped zone. However, a fatal pedestrian crash did occur in 2021 at the I-580 intersection with South Carson (an area maintained by NDOT) and again in 2023 north of the South Carson and Stewart Street roundabout.

Some of the more dangerous areas in the city for pedestrians, the Appeal found, are the North Carson Street corridor and the East William Street/Highway 50 East corridor, both of which are in the queue for Complete Streets projects.

A study for North Carson Complete Streets is expected to start next year, Martinovich said, and construction for the East William Street Complete Streets project may begin this year.

“And that’s probably the biggest corridor running from William Street all the way up to Medical Parkway,” he said of North Carson Street. “It’s a long corridor and there are a lot of different needs and uses in that corridor. Our study is going to look at what are the different needs, what are the traffic patterns, what are the access needs and the safety improvements especially that we can implement there.”

The estimated $21 million East William Street project received $9.3 million in federal grant money and will extend from downtown to the I-580 interchange near Gold Dust West.

Highway 50 east of I-580, stretching to Mound House, is overseen by CAMPO but maintained by NDOT. The two agencies are currently studying the corridor.

“The study was primarily focused in two phases,” said Martinovich. “Phase one was looking at traffic operations and safety. We wanted to understand what are the intersections that are causing traffic safety concerns. There have been pedestrian fatalities on Highway 50 out there, and so looking at those aspects in combination with the traffic operations ... Our travel demand model is forecasting a lot of growth in Lyon County. We know Lyon County is growing, and those people are coming to Carson City in large part. And so, we see a need for traffic operational things, whether that’s capacity or improved signal timing or things like that. There is a need for traffic considerations on that corridor.”

Phase II, he said, is focusing on multimodal aspects including pedestrian improvements as found in Complete Streets projects. Ella’s death this year was not the first pedestrian crash at the Highlands intersection. On Oct. 8, 2018, Manuel Jesus Sepulveda, 41, was hit by a pickup while trying to cross the highway. There is no crosswalk at the location, a 45 mph zone.

“As the region continues to develop, highway traffic in the Dayton area has increased almost 23 percent in 10 years, from 19,000 vehicles daily in 2012 to 23,300 vehicles daily in 2022,” said Meg Ragonese, public information officer for NDOT. “While the total crash rate on one mile of the highway between the Lyon County border and Kit Kat Drive is nearly 75 percent lower than other similar roadways statewide, three fatal crashes in the area between January 2018 and January 2024 have led to a fatal crash rate nearly 200 percent of the statewide average.”

Ragonese highlighted several plans and tools NDOT is using to address hazards.

“In addition, NDOT is using lidar (light detection and ranging) technology to anonymously analyze vehicle travel speeds and pedestrian movements in the area. The lidar technology identifies the shapes of objects, from vehicles and bicycles to pedestrians. This provides real-world data about how all users interact and travel the highway to help identify safety trends and needs for all modes of travel,” she said.

Speed management is a priority as well, Ragonese said.

“Tragically, speed is a top contributor to Nevada traffic fatalities. Speed influences the risk and severity of a crash. Nevada’s 5-year Speed Management Action Plan, approved in 2022, identifies ways to slow down drivers, including through road design, more visible law enforcement and public education,” she said. “Following this action plan, NDOT is also evaluating potential changes to U.S. 50 in Mound House to reduce potentially dangerous travel speeds.”

Marinovich said drivers need to slow down, especially in school zones. He stressed pedestrians need to avoid jaywalking, make eye contact with drivers while in crosswalks and wear light colors and reflective clothing at night. Of 19 fatal pedestrian crashes in Carson City limits in the last decade, the majority occurred at night or in the early morning hours.

“I think it’s great that people want to get out and walk,” Martinovich said. “I do walk. I bike. And it’s always disappointing when some driver doesn’t stop for you at a crosswalk. But I know that I’m paying attention as a pedestrian, and I hope others are paying attention too.”

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