Main Street Upgraded to Become Faster, Safer and Greener?

Main Street is a major thoroughfare bisecting our downtown. And soon, our main drag will be an astounding 15% faster to travel on, six million tons greener and part of an arsenal of engineering solutions aimed at making our downtown safer for many forms of transportation.

It sounds too good to be true but this sudden boost is because of lots of invested dollars and time by a multi-agency partnership to produce the Main Street Regional Traffic Signal Synchronization Project.

The project is expected to begin this month and anticipated to be completed by December 2020. This project is in partnership with the Orange County Transportation Authority to improve and update the traffic signals along the main street corridor from Taft Ave., in the City of Orange, through the City of Santa Ana to Culver Drive, in the City of Irvine. This $4,663,729 project will provide new equipment, like traffic signals cables and other infrastructure, along with a software upgrade of the Traffic Management Center.

We hope the synchronization will make Main Street safer in addition to the travel time and greenhouse gas-reducing benefits. Recently, a personal injury law firm in that works all over Orange County, collaborated with 1Point21 Interactive, a data visualization company, to inform the public of the 100 most dangerous intersections in Orange County. Four of these intersections are located in Santa Ana and two are in the downtown area along Main Street!

Aitken*Aitken*Cohen analyzed traffic patterns from the California Highway Patrols Statewide Integrated Traffic Reporting System from 2010 to 2019 to come up with a Crash Risk Index (CRI). The CRI weighs the volume of collisions and the severity of the injuries of the collisions. During the 2010 -2019 time period there were 60,000 traffic collisions that resulted in 55,891 injuries and 328 deaths.    

Fortunately for us, we don’t top the list of OC's Most Dangerous Intersections, but we are on it:

• Ranked #42: 1st St. and Main St.
  • 31 crashes
  • 46 minor/moderate injuries
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• Ranked #69: Civic Center Drive and Main street
  • 32 crashes
  • 39 minor/moderate injuries
  • 7 serious injuries

We look forward to the coming changes on Main Street and until then, be extra cautious at the above listed intersections.

Story by Abraham Gomez
Photos provided by OCTA, Google Maps