Photo Amber Shelton

Don’t Run Us Down!
Caltrans please
Step on the Brakes 

DON’T Let Long “Big Rig” Trucks onto the Scenic California Redwood Highway

Caltrans wants to remove size restrictions for the largest commercial trailer trucks traveling on California’s Redwood Highway by widening  Hwy 197/199, and other projects on Hwy 101. We need to stop the very same “Big Rigs” that usually travel wide multilane Interstate Highway 5 traveling from the breathtakingly beautiful, winding narrow two-lane Redwood Highway through the Smith River canyon: gateway to Del Norte County’s outdoor recreation economy, ecotourism and rural living. This project was planned long ago, and is outdated and does not even come close to today’s mission, goals, and operating procedures of Caltrans.  Another industrial trucking route is not appropriate to Del Norte’s economy or ecology. The very long (STAA) trucks need a large turning radius, pose serious threats, and just plain do not belong in the pristine Smith River Canyon community of worldwide visitors and local residents.

 Residents need you, the visitors, tourists and lovers of outdoor natural places, to add your stakeholder’s voices to the regional movement against this unnecessary and unsafe Caltans project ready to go. 

 The California Redwood Highway runs within the Smith River National Recreation Area, and is the primary access to Jedediah Smith State Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site that attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world to enjoy the park’s famous massive old-growth trees, family camping and picnicking sites, kayaking, hiking trails, fishing, and swimming. It borders the unspoiled Smith River, our water supply and one of California’s most treasured wild and scenic rivers, home to chinook and coho salmon, steelhead and sea-run cutthroat trout. 

These STAA trucks would not only significantly downgrade one of California’s most gorgeous regions (while offering no economic benefit to the area), they would also be highly inconsistent with safety concerns. The National Troopers Coalition (45,000 members) Chairman Mat Hodapp recently said, “that law enforcement officers have known for quite some time that bigger trucks threaten highway safety—a recent poll shows that, and the public knows it, too.” Big rigs, also known as “semis” have rear tires that follow a shorter path than the front tires. When vehicles are turning, rear tires of the truck can cross the center-line or slide onto the shoulder, called off-tracking. The longer the vehicle, the more this effect is magnified.

 These STAA industrial trucks will be hazardous to all road users, whether in trucks or cars, on bicycles, or walking. Long trucks, which are commonly 78-feet in length and up to 80,000 pounds, will be going around blind corners where a deer, tourist, oncoming truck, motorist or R.V. might appear at the next bend in the road. They also have braking problems, and resulting deaths and injuries are up nationally for trucks. A park visitor looking at the redwoods was killed by a truck just last year in Del Norte because the driver couldn’t stop in time. 

Residents adjacent to the Redwood Highway will also be negatively impacted since it is the only paved road available. Imagine going to buy your groceries, turning out of your driveway to go to work, or stepping outside to get your mail and dealing every day with giant big rigs randomly whizzing by on your rural road! 

 Local and regional environmental groups have already taken Caltrans to court for ecological issues and won the first round, but there is also a toll on the human environment—those who visit or live in Gasquet, Hiouchi, or nearby in Crescent City—who depend on and love the Smith River watershed.

Join us in asking Caltrans to put on the brakes and not allow access to these industrial STAA trucks onto the Redwood Highway. A more direct road for Big Rigs on their way to Eureka from Highway 5 will soon be available on Highway 299 and these trucks already serve our county of 25,000 people on Highway 101. 

 Rather than cutting into cliffs and cutting down trees, as the current project for adding STAA trucks onto Hwy 197/199 calls for, urge Caltrans to shelve this project. We do not want Caltrans  to add to the road wear-and-tear, pose safety dangers to the people, stress the landscape and wildlife, and cause significant loss to the outdoor scenic recreation economy, all from unnecessary STAA trucks, with no value added for rural Californian stakeholders. We need enhancement projects. We do not need to pay out-of-town  contractors to waste the $61 million taxpayers’ dollars budgeted for accommodating these trucks, while degrading our economy, our environment and our quality of life.

Please help put this project on the shelf and KEEP THE SIZE RESTRICTIONS on trucks as they are. Caltrans says it is updating its organization to meet 2015 goals, with a “context sensitive approach”, a new integrated mission statement and rigorous procedures and policies that include safety, sustainability, livability and participation by the public. We want this quality of work to apply to the Redwood Highway and beyond.