Adelanto workshop maps high‑injury roads as consultants lay out 27 draft safety strategies

Adelanto City Council and consultants from Alta Planning and Design held a workshop on Feb. 2, 2026, to review a draft Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) safety action plan and recommendations targeting the city’s most dangerous corridors.

“We will comprehensively evaluate traffic safety conditions across Adelanto,” Mayor Paul Tim Ramos said as he introduced the presentation, noting the effort is supported by a $240,000 federal grant from the Federal Highway Administration. He asked the city and residents to use the plan to pursue further funding and to prioritize local street improvements over projects on state‑owned Highway 395.

Caitlin Scott, a consultant with Alta Planning and Design, told the workshop the project began in February 2025 and is intended to be the planning step required for future implementation grants. She said the team has collected crash, speed and demographic data, conducted community engagement and will use that work to produce a draft plan and recommended next steps for city staff.

Robbie, a member of the Alta team, summarized the crash analysis for 2017–2024: “Adelanto experienced almost 400 total crashes. Within those crashes, almost 600 people were injured, 34 were serious injuries, and 47 during that time period were fatalities.” He said more than 95 percent of fatal and serious injury crashes occurred on about 5 percent of city streets, producing a high‑injury network that the plan uses to prioritize projects; the top corridors named were US 395, Air Expressway, Rancho Road, Mojave Drive and Palmdale Road.

The consultants described a draft portfolio of responses: 27 policy and process recommendations organized around safe‑system objectives (safe planning and culture, safe users, safe roadways, safe vehicles and safe speeds) and 69 potential infrastructure countermeasures grouped into four tiers — demand management, speed management, conflict management and redundancy. Highlighted policies included coordinating more closely with Caltrans on US 395, designating a city safety champion, keeping a rolling list of priority corridors with rough cost estimates to be grant‑ready, embedding safety into the capital improvement program and adopting context‑sensitive speed management guidance for corridor design.

Councilmembers and staff asked where funding should be spent and how to coordinate when key corridors are on Caltrans right‑of‑way. One councilmember said the city should focus grant dollars on city‑owned streets and push Caltrans to address safety on US 395. The consultants said they included city‑owned top‑10 street lists to help the city pursue projects it controls and that collaboration with Caltrans, SBCTA and county partners would be part of implementation where state right‑of‑way is involved.

City staff noted the city already has a separate $9.3 million grant in design for Safe Routes to School projects that the planning team can help inform. “We recently got over $9,000,000 to do roadway improvements near schools in Adelanto,” the consultant team said, pointing to opportunities to accelerate funded school‑area projects using recommendations from the plan.

Residents urged faster action and better safety at Adelanto High School, citing missing sidewalks, faded crosswalks and inadequate traffic controls near dismissal times. Tina Kapalos, a caller, asked the city to work with San Bernardino County and the school district to get paving and sidewalks in place. Officials explained jurisdictional complexity — several commenters noted Adelanto High is part of Victor Valley Unified and not the local K–8 district — and encouraged residents to attend school board meetings and complete the project survey to strengthen grant applications.

During public comment a caller challenged the pace of implementation; the consultants replied the current contract produced the plan and that physical changes require a subsequent funding and construction phase. A resident also disputed the fatality tally, suggesting the number of deaths may be higher than the 47 cited for 2017–2024; consultants and staff said they will continue refining crash records as part of the data work.

Next steps spelled out in the presentation include revising the draft plan with tonight’s input, making detailed corridor profiles available online and on boards at City Hall, and preparing applications for upcoming grant cycles such as the state Active Transportation Program (ATP) and future SS4A rounds. The consultants said they would be available for one‑on‑one discussions after the meeting and that the draft plan is intended to make Adelanto projects shovel‑ready for grant reviewers.

The council approved the meeting agenda at the start of the session; no formal votes on specific plan items were taken. The council announced its next regular meeting for Feb. 11, 2026, at 11 a.m. at Adelanto Stadium and adjourned at 7:18 p.m.