Eureka coalition seeks signatures for Highway 101 safety push

Residents along Eureka’s Highway 101 corridor are being asked to sign onto a push for faster safety changes on Broadway, Fourth Street and Fifth Street, the stretch where commuters, pedestrians and cyclists move through the city’s most dangerous traffic gauntlet. The Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities was collecting signatures through Monday, May 18, arguing that the corridor’s crash pattern demands urgent action, not another round of slow-moving planning.

The pressure campaign lands in the middle of a corridor that already has agency attention. Caltrans says it has invested about $50 million in safety improvements along U.S. 101 in Eureka since 2015, and says those changes have been linked to about a 70% drop in total collisions and a 50% drop in pedestrian and cyclist collisions. Even so, the state says more work remains, and it has secured funding for a Fourth and Fifth Street feasibility study set to begin in July 2026.

For South Broadway, Caltrans has laid out a Complete Streets project meant to make the roadway safer for people outside cars and improve access between neighborhoods and the Waterfront Trail. The project would add Class IV separated bikeways from the Papa & Barkley Co. signalized intersection to the Bayshore Mall entrance, new pedestrian and bicycle crossings at Hilfiker Lane, sidewalk and curb-ramp improvements, new bus stops, upgrades at existing signalized intersections and traffic-calming landscaping. Caltrans says the corridor has been a regional priority for years and has support from the City of Eureka, the Humboldt County Association of Governments, Humboldt Transit Authority, civic groups, businesses, public health officials, active transportation advocates, environmental organizations, disability rights groups and the public.

The stakes are not abstract. In March, Eureka police said they had recorded 10 fatal traffic collisions on the 101 corridor since 2020, including five pedestrians, three bicyclists and two drivers. Police launched Operation Gateway 101 to address traffic safety and blight along the corridor, focusing especially on Broadway and Fourth and Fifth streets, underscoring how visible the problem has become to the people charged with responding after crashes happen.

The corridor’s future now sits at the intersection of daily safety, long-range transportation planning and climate risk. Caltrans says the Eureka-Arcata section of Highway 101 is the region’s most heavily traveled highway, and a May 14 climate adaptation plan said it faces vulnerability from sea level rise, coastal erosion, flooding and saltwater intrusion. The agency’s earlier Indianola Undercrossing work, part of the larger Eureka-Arcata U.S. 101 Corridor Improvement Project, carried an estimated construction cost of about $51.4 million and showed how much money can move when the corridor is treated as a priority. The petition drive is a test of whether Broadway, Fourth and Fifth will finally get the same urgency.