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Updated April 9th, 2009
Sorrow, Anger, Action in
Aftermath of Crash
Corrective Measures Finally Taken
Makeshift memorial tribute to Angel and Angelina Posca, who were killed by a runaway truck on Angeles Crest Highway last Wednesday.
By ERIC NOLAND
The Outlook
Doesn’t it usually play out this
way? Complaints are raised about a
potentially hazardous situation, but
the authorities responsible for
addressing it hem, haw and ultimately
do nothing. Then a terrible
incident happens, involving loss of
life, serious injuries and property
wreckage more commonly found at
a bomb site. Then the grinding
gears of government suddenly whir
into swift, decisive action.
That’s what seemed to happen
— sadly, maddeningly — in the
wake of last Wednesday’s devastating
crash of a runaway truck at the
base of Angeles Crest Highway in
La Cañada Flintridge.
Caltrans’ top man, Will
Kempton, flew down from
Sacramento the next day and took a
drive on the mountain road. He
issued an executive order one day
later banning big rigs on the route
for a period of 90 days. Signs went
up within two days, and the road
was soon crawling with Highway
Patrol officers.
And the two local state legislators,
Assemblyman Anthony Portantino and state Sen. Carol Liu,
drew up a fast-track bill to create an
even stricter truck prohibition and
make it permanent.
The ban “is the first step,” said
Mayor Laura Olhasso, who encountered
this crisis in just her ninth day
in office. “We have been outraged
that it took two deaths to get to it.”
Angel Posca, 58, and his 12 year-old daughter, Angelina, both of
Palmdale, were killed when a runaway
car-carrier big rig slammed
into their car in the late afternoon of
April 1. The truck plowed into several
other vehicles at Foothill
Boulevard and came to rest inside
the Flintridge Bookstore &
Coffeehouse, leaving more than a
dozen injured people in its wake.
Costa has been charged with vehicular
manslaughter in the Poscas’
deaths.
Portantino’s bill will seek to put
much sharper teeth in the big-rig
prohibition on the Crest. Because
some massive trucks can come rumbling
down the mountain highway
on three or four axles, the City
Council on Monday night urged that
the legislation ban commercial
truck traffic with more than two
axles or weighing more than five
tons. It would cover the highway
from the 210 Freeway all the way to
its potential access points from
Interstate 15 near the Cajon Pass,
Highways 18 and 138. (Angeles
Crest Highway is currently closed
on that route because of a landslide,
but is due to reopen in the fall.)
It is hoped the restriction will
extend to all access points to the
road, including Angeles Forest
Highway, which is maintained by
Los Angeles County. That was the
route chosen from the Antelope
Valley by Costa last week.
Beyond the big-truck ban, governmental
bodies will seek to
address a number of other safety
measures — again, belatedly. They
include building an escape lane just
north of the city limits and/or restoring
the neglected gravel median
already in place in the center of the
highway on the approach to town,
creating a brake-inspection stop for
truckers far up the mountain,
imbedding sensors in roads far back
in the mountains to alert law
enforcement to the approach of
overweight offenders, and programming
road warnings into the global positioning
systems used by most
truckers.
Caltrans convened a press conference
to announce the big-rig ban
at the end of last week — choosing
a site well up the highway, one mile
beyond city limits. It was noted that
a legislative remedy was most
appropriate for the prohibition,
because that was employed for the
three other California highways that
ban big trucks.
But this raised a question: If it’s
the best course, why didn’t Portantino urgently take up his pen
in September, after a runaway big
rig hauling onions wedged alongside
the Hill Street Cafe, slammed
into some cars, and issued an
emphatic warning signal on the danger
of trucks on the highway?
“I think the hope was that the
California Department of
Transportation would exercise its
discretion to solve the problem,” Portantino, a former La Cañada
Flintridge mayor, said this week. “I
think that’s why the city sent the letters
requesting help. It’s always
been (Caltrans’) jurisdiction to deal
with the engineering issues.
Obviously, that didn’t happen.”
Indeed, it didn’t. What happened
instead was a series of wranglings
between the city and the state
agency, involving phone calls, letters
and e-mails — at least nine
communications in all — over a period of six months. The paper
trail reveals ponderous progress on
the part of Caltrans and quibbling
by the city over specifics of the
agency’s proposals.
In the wake of the onion truck
crash in September, City Manager
Mark Alexander wrote a letter to Caltrans District 7 Director Doug
Failing, but nowhere is the issue of
a truck ban raised. Instead, the letter
vaguely asks “that Caltrans explore
what options, if any, might mitigate
runaway vehicle risks on Angeles
Crest Highway.”
Caltrans waited until late
November to report that it was “still
investigating” and expected its
study to be completed in 4-6 weeks.
In late January, the agency
wrote that it had completed its
investigation, and proposed a solution:
restoring the gravel-filled
escape medians in the center of the
road on the approach to Foothill.
(Caltrans had abandoned them a
dozen or so years ago — and
removed the signs directing runaway
drivers to them. Alexander
recollects that the escape lanes didn’t
meet current Caltrans’ standards
at the time and the agency was concerned
about liability if the medians
failed to stop a runaway driver. The
beds are still filled with pea-sized
gravel, which is now covered with
wild-oat weeds, knee-high oleander
bushes and poppies.)
But the agency’s letter also cited
the “state’s current economic downturn
and the limited availability of
funds,” and said the improvements
would be put on a list of competing
projects in Southern California.
Rather than welcome the
prospect of the restored medians —
and press for high priority — the
city on March 3 instead disputed the
proposed location of an escape lane.
Alexander’s letter asked that a new
one instead be built farther up the
highway, at a wide, relatively flat
stretch just off the right shoulder
above Bay Tree Road. Also in this
letter, the city for the first time
urged that “trucks be prohibited (on
Angeles Crest Highway) completely.”
That was followed by a month
of silence — shattered by the sound
of the car transporter slamming
into the Poscas’ car.
Alexander said the city’s objection
to a revival of the escape medians
was based on Traffic Engineer
Erik Zandvliet’s study of the matter.
That option was problematic,
Zandvliet found, because a runaway
truck would have to veer
from the right lane through another
lane of downhill traffic to reach the
gravel beds. And if he missed it to
the left, he’d be head-on with
oncoming traffic. Also, left turns
off the highway would have to be
prohibited to northbound traffic at
Fairview Drive, Wiladonda Drive,
Angeles Crest Circle, Olive Lane
and possibly Green Lane to keep
vehicles out of the escape path,
which means people living west of
the road would have to drive nearly
to the top of the hill and execute Uturns
onto a fast-moving stretch of
downhill highway.
But a different tune was being
sung at Monday night’s City
Council meeting. Zandvliet said he
would like to see a “belt and suspenders
solution,” with the new
escape lane built above Bay Tree
Road and the center median escape
restored. The median escape “is not
the best condition,” he said, “but
it’s still better than nothing.” And
Olhasso said, “We will be working
with Caltrans to either reconstitute
the existing truck arresters in the
medians and/or construct additional
ones.”
The mayor also met late last
week with Rep. David Dreier,
whose Congressional district
includes La Cañada Flintridge.
Alarmed that unwary truckers are
being directed to the steep grades
of the Angeles Forest and Angeles
Crest highways by their global positioning
systems — a suspicion
in each of the last two accidents —
Olhasso wants warnings programmed
into the navigational
readouts. The federal government
has oversight of the global-positioning
system.
Dreier said he would press for
reforms, seeking perhaps a color coded
system showing which roads
are prohibited for which types of
trucks.
“The thing about GPS, it doesn’t
show what the grade is,” Dreier
said on his visit to City Hall. “The
(drivers) are just going to see a line.
A driver from Georgia or
Massachusetts, they come in and
they’re just looking for a shortcut.
There has to be some signal.”
He added: “If (GPS) equipment
is not providing enough information
about what the grade is and what
the treacherousness of the particular
road is, then it would seem to me
that the people at GPS would want
to do that. And if they don’t want to
do it, I think it’s up to us to make
sure that they do.”
Of course, all corrective measures
— a truck ban, escape lanes,
brake-check areas, road sensors and
GPS improvements — will all
occur after the fact, after the crash,
after needless deaths and injuries
and property damage. The dollar
and human costs won’t be calculated
for some time.
“You’re looking at $25 million
just to cover the lawsuits (incurred
by the state),” said City Councilman
Dave Spence. “And it’s sad. It’s
really, really sad. The money can’t
do anything to bring that little girl back and give her a happy life.”
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