NIGHTMARE Vasco Road
	OCTOBER 2003

by Don Huntington
Photos by Brad Shifflett

For the second time in a week, a car accident has killed three people on Vasco Road, police said. (San Jose Mercury News)

“We all went together to go picking fruit,” said a 17–year–old survivor of the fiery crash.

We can travel between Livermore and Brentwood enough times to become inured to the majesty and beauty of the scenery along Vasco Road. However, the deaths, dismemberments, and injuries on that road can never come so often that they no longer shake our emotions and imaginations.

Even when it doesn’t kill somebody, Vasco Road serves up an accident every week or so. These stop traffic dead, usually right in the middle of commute traffic that is so congested on most days even without any accident as to be nearly unendurable.

Recent statistics show that the number of accidents has been declining while the number of deaths has been increasing.

Over the past five years, Alameda County reports a 300 percent increase in traffic on many of its rural roads. It is estimated that Vasco Road gets between 19,000 and 24,000 vehicles a day, with a peak volume of about 1,900 an hour. The people at risk every day on Vasco Road include an amazing number of teamsters — those “kings of the highway” sitting high in the cabs of their “40-footers,” or in their delivery trucks, or ponderous garbage trucks on their way to the Altamont landfill. Of course, we must make special mention of the drivers perched high in the cabs of the nearly ubiquitous double-bottom gravel trucks that seem to crowd this road day and night. People at risk on Vasco Road also

include vacationers and tourists from other areas in California on their way to enjoy the Delta and to buy products from our local produce stands. Most obviously, people using Vasco Road to their peril include a lot of professionals on their way to and from jobs at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and hi-tech companies in the Pleasanton area and throughout Silicon Valley. Highway Patrol officers tell us that many of the accidents are caused when people drive too fast for conditions. Many of us are either a few minutes late for work in the morning, anxious to get home and relax in the evening, or just hurrying because dashing about has become the habitual way some of us live.

Frustrating view from the side mirror	Red brake lights, bumper to bumper congestion, some cars trying to sneak around the line, and everyone boiling.

Guaranteeing mayhem (What everyone knows and nobody admits)
For 13 miles of its length — from the traffic light at Camino Diablo to the Alameda County Border — Vasco Road is an improved two-lane highway that could easily be driven (in the absence of traffic) at 90 miles an hour by any experienced driver. The road surface is smooth, traffic lanes are wide, and curves are gentle. In the absence of slower traffic or congestion the flow of traffic on Vasco Road often reaches 75 miles per hour. Sometimes more. All of us who drive it regularly have been passed by drivers doing 80–90 MPH. It’s easy to drive that fast on that road as long as everything goes smoothly.

If a driver, in fact, keeps up with the flow of traffic it is typical, in my experience, to be able to drive the entire improved stretch at 70+ miles an hour and never encounter a slower vehicle, except on the uphill grades, which have passing lanes.

All of us who drive the road regularly know that if you drive even 65 in light traffic conditions on Vasco Road you will end up with a pickup truck, van, or even one of those double-bottom gravel trucks sitting right on your bumper trying to get you to move over or speed up. Of course, things go very unsmoothly indeed when any vehicle actually obeys the speed limit. A car going 55 MPH in the middle of a traffic stream that is attempting to go 75 MPH creates a scenario in which chaos can occur. The vehicle ends up after a few miles at the head of an ungraceful parade of impatient — in some cases enraged — drivers moving back and forth over the dividing line as they anxiously search for an opportunity to pass.

A dangerous situation!
Conditions on the narrow, winding, unimproved section of the road as you near Livermore are just as conducive to accidents. Big rigs crowd each other and no passing lanes are available on this stretch. The speed limit in this section drops to 35 mph and the unimpeded traffic flow typically moves at 60 MPH or more (except for the tightest curves). If any driver actually drives 35 MPH on the unimproved part, the speed differential (the “closing speed”) with the other motorists trying to maintain the typical 60 MPH average, is almost doubled.

Of course, there will be drivers in any line of cars stacked up behind some conscientious law-abider who will always begin looking for ANY opportunity to pass the slower vehicle at the front of the line. Even if a marginal opportunity presents itself they will “put the peddle to the metal” and do anything to get to that blessed stretch of empty highway that the slower driver has, by now, swept out in front of him.

The people passing in this way are, in fact, able to make their marginal passing moves without smashing up their own and others’ cars 999 times out of a thousand — which accounts for the fact that accidents typically happen on Vasco Road only every week or so, as somebody’s luck runs out during one of those marginal passing attempts.

Regular commuters often comment that they are not surprised at the great number of accidents. What they ARE surprised about is that there are not a lot more of these. It is obvious to everyone who knows anything about Vasco Road that the real solution to the problem is to make the road four lanes from Brentwood to Livermore. Some residents and long-term users of the highway resent the fact that this wasn’t done in 1996 when the 13 mile stretch of improved road was relocated by the Los Vaqueros Reservoir project. A lot of residents are wondering, in the words of Dylan, “How many deaths will it take till we know, That too many people have died?” Some people think that there have already been too many deaths.

Swimming in wet concrete — The glacial pace of
any Vasco Road improvement
Vasco Road is obviously overdue for a major renovation. However, any changes require extensive coordination among Brentwood, Livermore, and Contra Costa and Alameda counties in order to facilitate the planning, design, construction, and above all, the financing of any Vasco Road improvements.

On February 13, 2001, the Brentwood City Council contracted with Gray Bowen and Company, Inc. to look at safety issues for Highway 4 and Vasco Road. A disappointing feature of the contract (for us lay people, at least) is Gray Bowen’s frank admission:

This will be a very long involved process including strategic planning meetings, a magnitude of paperwork preparing estimates, technical reports, and coordination with Caltrans.

It is no revelation to most of us that public works projects typically move at an absolutely drunken gait — staggering to the left, to the right, spinning around, falling down.... Any improvement to the Vasco roadway requires the approval of no fewer than eleven separate government agencies:

1. Alameda County Public Works Agency (PWA)
2. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
3. San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board
4. NPDES Section 402
5. US Fish and Wildlife Service
6. California Transportation Commission
7. California Department of Fish and Game
8. City of Brentwood
9. City of Antioch
10. City of Oakley
11. Contra Costa County

In other words, before the section of the roadway going into Livermore with all the hills and tight turns can be fixed, both the Department of Fish and Game and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, for example, have to demonstrate, each to their own satisfaction, that the environment in the North Livermore Hills won’t be affected by straightening out the roadway.

And how many of us ever knew about NPDES (National Pollution Discharge and Elimination Service) and their Section 402 requirements? And who knows how many tests and separate research projects the scientists and technicians from NPDES are going to conduct before they will finally admit that straightening out the road isn’t going to create any awful discharges of pollution?

One of the miraculous things about our modern society is not that public works projects move at a ponderous pace but that, with all the interlocking pieces to these truly gargantuan puzzles, anything ever gets done at all. Since we know that there is almost nothing in that area except some pastureland, a few scattered outbuildings, and the edge of the windmill farm, most of us can figure out that discharges of pollution isn’t probably a major issue.

A constantly disappointing thing about all governmental oversight agencies, however, is that they control their own workflow. In other words, nothing can be done to improve Vasco Road through this stretch until the National Pollution Discharge and Elimination Service SAYS that there is no issue with discharge, no matter how obvious it seems to a layperson.

A plan to fix the worst part
One of the agencies involved in making improvements to Vasco Road is the Alameda County Public Works Agency (PWA), which developed a draft plan last year entitled, “Vasco Road Safety Improvement Phase 1.” The plan offers a program for improving the most needy part of Vasco Road — the twisting narrow unimproved section just outside Livermore that we spoke of at the beginning of the article (between Mile Posts 3.0 and 4.3, if you have a surveyor’s map of the area). This is the part of the road that squeezes suddenly into two narrow traffic lanes with limited-visibility curves and no shoulders.

The PWA plan for Vasco improvement in this report has four parts (quoted directly below):

1. To improve traffic safety by realigning a segment of the roadway to eliminate all existing tight curves;
2. To minimize traffic delays (due to traffic back up behind slow moving vehicles traveling in either direction by providing passing lanes at inclines;
3. To upgrade the roadway to current design standards by increasing the roadway curve radii and providing adequate shoulder width and sight distance; and
4. To accommodate future public transit on Vasco Road as a whole (this is the only section of Vasco Road where curves are too tight to accommodate buses.

Something to keep you awake at night
Whoever thinks about what would happen if (God forbid) some terrible disaster occurs — perhaps some widespread holocaust is perpetuated by a terrorist group — and it becomes necessary to evacuate the area? We would just die like rats in our homes or in the middle of the ensuing impossible traffic jams.

The insufficient traffic arteries around this area means we couldn’t evacuate if we ever needed to.

The issue raises again the annoying larger issue involving developers’ ability to create new homes much faster than governments can develop infrastructure to accommodate the growth. Some people, of course, think there ought to be a law about this....

Fixing the Devil’s road
Anybody who ever had to travel Vasco Road in a commute knows that a terrible part of the road is the traffic signal where Vasco crosses Camino Diablo (Devil’s Road) just to the south of Brentwood.

The traffic signal at this intersection often backs up the southbound traffic in the morning and the northbound traffic in the evening for miles. County engineers conducted a study of the intersection and gave it flunking grades for both morning and evening commutes, calling it one of the worst traffic problems in Contra Costa County.

The only really great solution would be to put in some kind of limited access intersection (e.g., a ‘cloverleaf’ or ‘diamond’ intersection). But lacking the kind of funds to implement a major solution like that, plans have been made for widening the north and south legs of Vasco Road to improve traffic flow and for reconfiguring the Camino Diablo lanes at that intersection.

Brentwood city officials and the East County Transit Authority jointly initiated a traffic study and sought funding for the project, which is being added to the county Board of Supervisors’ project list. It was hoped that construction could be scheduled for this fall. But since the project hasn’t been funded yet, it probably won’t happen that soon.

A few behaviors that will help keep you alive even on Vasco Road:

Never let other drivers scream and curse at you
I put this first because this is the one I think about most often when I’m driving. If another driver flips me off or honks his horn at me in an angry manner, I take it as a personal defeat. I analyze my actions and try to make changes in my behavior so that won’t happen again.

We all know about The Golden Rule — do to others as you want them to do to you. But when it comes to driving there is an even better rule than this. People call it the Platinum Rule — do to others as they want you to do to them.

Driving by the Platinum Rule decreases the chances of our killing someone or being killed by them. An enraged driver is a dangerous driver. Why should I unnecessarily put myself into this kind of danger?

Another thing about this second behavior
Homicidal maniacs drive down Vasco Road sometimes. Keep screaming at other drivers and flipping them off and some day you might run across one of these people. When that happens you might not actually survive the discovery. Never scream and curse at other drivers. This is the flip side of the first behavior, of course. Road rage is ridiculous. We all know that at some level, but any of us can still let ourselves get sucked in. An enraged driver is a dangerous driver, especially when that raving, ranting person is me. By meditation, prayer, counseling, whatever... we must take control of our emotions. Compassion, kindness, gentleness, and patience should become the hallmarks of our driving attitudes.

This second behavior is simply the way we should all drive. For example, we want other people to drive in a peaceable manner.

Keep up with the flow of traffic
The big problems on Vasco Road with speed come from the fact that the speed differential between two particular vehicles — the “closing speed” can be 30 miles an hour. This is a killer. All the drivers who righteously maintain the Vasco Road speed limit under all conditions know that they are, thereby, increasing the risk to themselves and to other drivers. An obvious solution is to not drive at the speed limit whenever doing so might cause an accident. Let’s not do anything to increase the risk of being killed or killing someone else.

Pull over and let people pass
If you simply refuse to go the speed of the other traffic and end up with a row of angry drivers behind you, just pull over and let them pass. I know that this is not possible on most of the unimproved section of the road but it is easily done every place else. I think a lot of people who drive the speed limit congratulate themselves on being careful drivers, but those angry people in their rearview mirrors are dangerous. Some people feel they would rather die than let other drivers — “who are breaking the law, for crying out loud” — have the satisfaction of getting ahead of them. But I do this all the time. And, guess what.... It doesn’t hurt at all. In fact, it makes me feel better about the situation — and, of course, it makes the other drivers, who can now get on with their journey in an unimpeded fashion — feel good about me. (This is the most obvious application of the Platinum Rule I talked about earlier.)

Drive by the numbers when you can

Vasco road is only about 20 miles long. That means if you drive at 55 MPH (the posted speed limit) you’ll arrive in 26 minutes, or so. At 80 MPH you do it in 18 minutes.The eight minutes (all right, nine minutes, since part of the road is 35 MPH) you save is hardly enough time to have a cup of coffee and talk about the Giants with a co-worker. Just slow down.

And think about this: If you get stopped by a Highway Patrolman and have to go to six hours of traffic school some Saturday — figure an hour traveling to and from — it will take you 48 weeks to recover the time lost, at eight minutes twice a day.

Never drive when drowsy or fatigued
Sit in the parking lot before you leave work and take a “power snooze,” if you need to. Pull off the road and “catch 40 winks,” if you find yourself becoming drowsy. Go to bed at a reasonable hour. Watching “Stupid Pet Tricks” when doing so is going to decrease your driving ability the next day is, itself, a pretty stupid ‘trick.’ Not only will remaining alert make you a safer driver, but this behavior will make you a better person to work with when you get to the job or to live with when you get home.

Never make a turn or lane-change without signaling
I think we Californians are some of the worst people in the whole world for neglecting turn-signals. We should try to cultivate the turn-signal habit. On Vasco Road, always signal lane changes and turns. Let the other guy know what you are doing. When I pass a car or truck I always signal a right turn before reentering the traffic lane. I don’t know how much actual safety this buys me, but it makes me feel good to acknowledge that I’m aware of the other driver and am treating him as courteously as I can.

Building a fire under the Process
Brentwood resident Joanne Flynn is no longer content to let meandering bureaucratic processes take their leisurely course. Joanne’s friend, Patricia Altman, was killed on Vasco Road on August 10 and the tragedy prompted Joanne and Patricia’s husband, Jeff, to get involved in the Vasco Road improvement process by researching current improvement initiatives and directly contacting involved officials. Before the end of the month Joanne had voiced her concerns in a face-to-face meeting with Sen. Torlakson.

In part, perhaps, because of Joanne’s tireless efforts, the State Legislature Appropriations Committee passed Bill SB 802 on August 29. SB 802 is a small but important step that designates both Vasco Road and Byron Highway (see the Drive4Life article in this issue) as “inter-regional routes” clearing the way for them to compete for State Transportation Improvement Program Funds.

Joanne has formed a committee she calls Concerned Residents About Vasco Experiences (CRAVE). The committee has the goal of encouraging residents of Brentwood, Byron, Discovery Bay, Oakley, Antioch, and Pittsburg to unite behind the legislation. On September 9 Joanne hosted the first meeting of CRAVE in her Brentwood home. During the meeting she shared information about proposed improvements to Vasco Road.She has organized a letter-writing campaign encouraging Governor Davis to sign SB 802 into legislation and hopes personally to hand deliver them to the governor.

Don Huntington is Editor-in-Chief for 110° - East County Living magazine. You can reach him at don@110mag.com