Traffic woes felt in Northern Colorado

Fort Collins, Longmont have busiest, most perilous intersections

Drivers were more likely to have an accident in 1999 at the intersection of Drake Road and Shields Street than anywhere else in Northern Colorado and southern Wyoming.

In a ranking of municipal intersections along the Front Range, stretching into Cheyenne and Laramie, Wyo., the Drake-Shields crossing emerged as the most accident-prone site in the region. Other Fort Collins intersections to make the top 12 include: Mason and Oak streets, College and Monroe avenues; Lemay and Riverside avenues; Prospect Road and Shields Street; Howes Street and Mountain Avenue; Harmony Road and Shields Street; College Avenue and Horsetooth Road; College Avenue and Troutman Parkway, and LaPorte Avenue and Mason Street.

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Longmont was the only other locale to crack the top 12. Longmont intersections ranked among the 12 most accident-prone include 21st Avenue and Terry Street and Ninth Avenue and Sunset Street.

A total of 49 accidents occurred at Drake and Shields in 1999. The intersection saw an average of 54,203 cars per day last year, which adds up to more than 19.7 million over the course of the year. Based on traffic counts, there were almost 2.5 accidents per million cars entering the intersection.

“That’s starting to be a little bit of a concern,´ said Rich Brewbaker, a traffic-engineering technician with the city of Fort Collins. “Anytime we’re getting close to three vehicles per million it becomes a top priority to figure out what’s going on at that intersection.”

What’s going on at Drake and Shields may be over, though.

“With all that construction there last year, I think that was the reason there was such a high accident rate,” Brewbaker said.

Barrels and barricades

Drivers contended with a $1.2 million, 3.5-month project that installed landscaped medians and left turn lanes on Drake Road.

Construction of the new Larimer County Justice Center at the corner of Mason Street and LaPorte Avenue was at play in the high accident rate at that corner, Brewbaker said.

LaPorte and Mason saw seven accidents and more than 3.8 million cars in 1999 for an accident rate of 1.82 per million cars.

“Hopefully those accidents will decline (now that construction is complete),” Brewbaker said. “Whenever you have traffic control set up and it’s down to one lane – that’s what causes accidents.”

In Longmont, the intersection of 21st Avenue and Terry Streets had an accident rate of 2.2 per million cars based on the seven accidents at that crossing and the calculated 3.3 million cars that passed through it. Ninth Avenue and Sunset Street had a rating of 2.04 accidents per million cars with 10 accidents and an estimated 5 million cars in 1999.

But taking those rankings at face value is unfair, said Joe Olson, transportation engineer for the city.

“What it means to be the most dangerous intersection is subjective and open to debate,” Olson said.

For example, a high-traffic, signalized intersection may have a lot of accidents because of the sheer volume of cars passing through it, Olson said. Meanwhile, a less trafficked intersection without a signal may have only a handful of accidents but its accident rate would be higher because fewer cars pass through the crossing, he said.

Longmont keeps track of its accident rates, comparing like intersections, Olson said. High-traffic intersections with signals are grouped with other high-traffic intersections with signals; low traffic, no-light intersections with others like them. Once grouped the accident rates are weighted, taking into account the number of injury accidents and the severity of those injuries.

Main Street trouble

Using its own ranking system, Longmont found that the intersection of 17th Avenue and Main Street was the most dangerous in its boundaries.

“There were 93 accidents there over three years,” Olson said.

The 17th-Main crossing wound up with an accident rate of 1.79 and a weighted accident rate of 2.33 when injuries were figured into the formula, Olson said. The average daily traffic at the intersection was 47,500 vehicles.

“Anything above 1.66 with those kinds of volumes would be considered a high-accident location,” he said.

“It’s mostly just congestion. The vast majority of accidents at a typical urban intersection are rear-end – most are fender-benders. There’s a lot of stop-and-go traffic.”

Congestion is apparent at College Avenue and Horsetooth Road in Fort Collins, which ranked as the busiest intersection along the Front Range. An estimated 26.7 million vehicles passed through the intersection in 1999, an average of 73,224 cars per day.

The other busiest spots in the Choice City included in the top 12 were: Prospect Road and Shields Street; College and Monroe avenues; Drake Road and Shields Street, and College Avenue and Troutman Parkway.

Many of those making the busiest list also show up as the most dangerous. It is a sign of the region’s unbridled growth of late, said Matt Baker, manager of the Fort Collins street-oversizing program. The growth is coming not only in the form of new residents driving on city streets, but also in residents traveling more miles on those streets, he said.

“Although population growth is only going up 2.5 to 3.2 percent a year, vehicle miles traveled is up 8 percent a year,” Baker said. “People are driving a lot more than expected.”

Growth begets traffic

Longmont also made the list of the busiest intersections, with five crossings appearing in the top 12. Busy intersections are a product of growth, Olson said, as are more accidents. But he is reluctant to say that accidents are on the rise.

“We are seeing an increase in accidents, but I don’t know that by looking at one year of data you can say accidents are going up,” he said. “The frequency seems to be going up. But when you track year to year and account for the population growth and the number of miles, the number of accidents isn’t going up.”

Cheyenne’s intersection of Dell Range Boulevard and Converse Avenue made the list, as did the intersection of U.S. highways 287 and 34 in Loveland.

In 1999, more than 15.7 million cars passed through the intersection. A few years back, Loveland widened those roadways and made major improvements to the intersection because of the high volume it sees, said Bill Hange, city traffic engineer.

“It was totally redone,” Hange said. “We widened the turn lanes, installed new signals and got a lot better alignment of the lanes.”

The improvements also included more advanced signs over the roadways, letting drivers know which lane they should be in before they’re at the intersection, he said. Such signs are important, especially in Loveland, because of summer visitors, Hange said.

“We have a ton of tourist traffic,” he said. Estimates have pegged tourist influx as increasing traffic on U.S. 34 by as much as 30 percent in the summer. “We have to take into account those are unfamiliar drivers.”

Tourists illustrate a side of the intersection numbers that can’t be easily calculated in any formula – the human factor.

“Human factors are large,” Hange said. “There’s a lot of emphasis today nationally on older drivers. We’re doing things like putting up bigger signs, putting bigger letters on signs. Our sight’s getting worse as we get older.”

Loss of peripheral vision and reaction time also creep up on people as they get older, Hange said.

Hang up and drive

There also are many distractions to drivers today, which can multiply the human factor.

“I don’t know that I’d say we’re getting more inattentive,” Olson said. “But there are people who aren’t paying attention to what they’re doing. People are talking on cell phones, doing whatever they’re doing; sometimes it seems like driving is secondary.”

Wider lanes, bigger signs and other improvements can only make so much of an impact on accident rates, Brewbaker said. Ultimately, safety lies with drivers.

“Drivers have to take responsibility for their actions on the road,” he said.