Marion County adopts Transportation Safety Action Plan to prioritize high-injury corridors and boost grant readiness

The Marion County Board of Commissioners on June 18 adopted the Marion County Transportation Safety Action Plan, a county-specific document that identifies high-injury corridors, outlines potential countermeasures and cost estimates, and is intended to strengthen the county’s capacity to apply for state and federal safety grants.

The plan, presented by Carl Lund, Marion County traffic engineer, compiles a high-injury network and a list of targeted countermeasures for corridors and intersections the county identified as having the greatest safety need. Commissioners approved the plan by voice vote after brief discussion.

Carl Lund told the board the plan includes both corridor- and intersection-level listings. “We developed a high injury network location list,” Lund said, citing McKay, Yergan, Ellen (the county’s current safety corridor), Silverton Road, Cordon Road, Northwest Avenue in Stayton, Golf Club Road, River Road and State Street from Cascade Highway to Cordon Road. He identified intersection focus points including Silverton Road at Howell Prairie, Silverton Road at First Avenue, McKay Road at Prairie Road/French Prairie Road, and Brook Lake Road at River Road.

Lund said the plan pairs each high-injury location with a menu of countermeasures and includes an appendix with scoped projects and engineer’s cost estimates to make project proposals competitive for grants. He described the plan as a tool to “provide a good foundation for obtaining grants and funding.”

The presentation summarized county crash patterns and countermeasure strategies. Lund said roughly 40% of crashes in Marion County are lane or roadway departures and that such crashes account for just over 60% of the county’s fatal and serious-injury collisions. “About 80% of these are crashes where vehicles leave the road and run into an object — whether that’s a tree, a mailbox, a fence,” Lund said, explaining why treatments such as wider lane markings, rumble strips, chevrons and clear-zone work are prioritized.

Lund also noted impaired driving on rural roadways as a recurring problem and described outreach efforts tied to recently accepted state funding. The plan references the Federal Highway Administration’s Safe Systems approach — an internationally derived framework the FHWA has endorsed that aims to reduce fatal and serious injuries by addressing vehicle speeds, roadway design, vehicle safety and post-crash care.

Commissioners discussed how the plan will be used. Lund said the plan’s appendix contains project scopes and preliminary cost estimates to align with typical grant packages; commissioners noted individual project estimates in the appendix can be large. The board referenced one project estimate in the plan — an intersection upgrade (Hazel Green/Corbin) with a construction estimate of about $15,000,000 and engineering and design at roughly $4,000,000, for a total near $20,000,000. Commissioners also said the appendix items they reviewed summed to roughly $127,000,000, and Lund characterized the full set of desired projects as reaching into the “hundreds of millions” if the county attempted to implement them all.

A commissioner asked how the plan moves from study to construction; Lund said the county must have projects in a plan to be eligible for many state and federal grants and that the appendix’s scopes and estimates are intended to match typical grant requirements. Lund also said the plan is the county’s first Transportation Safety Action Plan and that an upcoming process will update the county’s rural Transportation System Plan.

After comments and brief questions, Commissioner Cameron moved to adopt the Transportation Safety Action Plan; the motion was seconded and approved by voice vote.

Votes at a glance - Consent calendar (motions included reappointing Colm Willis as the Marion County commissioner representative and appointing Lt. Jamieson Goetz as the Oregon State Police representative to the Marion County Public Safety Coordinating Council; approving revised Marion County administrative policy No. 515, procedures 515-a and 515-b on court facility security; and receiving notice of a hearings officer decision denying conditional use case 25-0110, Susan Malak): motion moved by Commissioner Cameron, seconded; outcome: approved by voice vote. - Adoption of Marion County Transportation Safety Action Plan: motion moved by Commissioner Cameron, seconded; outcome: approved by voice vote.

The board’s discussion also included broader remarks about state funding prospects and legislative matters. One commissioner described recent testimony before the state legislature opposing parts of a transportation package and House Bill 2005 on the grounds that county responsibilities and funding were not adequately addressed; that same commissioner referenced a recent contempt order related to timeliness at the Oregon State Hospital when discussing state-level responsibilities for behavioral health placements. Those comments were delivered as general context and were not part of the plan vote.

The plan gives Marion County staff a prioritized set of locations and countermeasures intended to support grant applications and future engineering work; the county will now incorporate the plan into its grant-seeking and project-planning activities.