Santa Clara recently laid out its plan for developing the city’s main commercial corridor, but safety improvements along the thoroughfare are part of a long-term vision that do little to make the treacherous stretch of road safer in the near term.

As part of the El Camino Real Specific Plan, approved by the council earlier this year, the city aims to create activity centers that focus on pedestrian and commercial activity. The plan details the intent to work with the Valley Transit Authority (VTA) and Caltrans to make the road a “multimodal complete street,” i.e., one that accommodates a variety of travel modes and makes the road safer for pedestrians and cyclists.

Toward that end, according to the plan, the city will “[d]esign streets and pathways to be safe, comfortable, inviting, and include additional/well-marked crossings, corner design features, bulbouts, wide sidewalks, street furnishings, street trees, and pedestrian-scale lighting.”

But that macro vision is cold comfort to those who feel El Camino Real is too dangerous to wait for that plan to come to fruition.

Among such people is Nathan Pope. In 2024, a motorist careened into a tree that fell over and killed Pope’s son, Kephas, a Santa Clara University (SCU) sophomore. Earlier this year, Santa Clara police arrested 39-year-old Jonathan Drake, charging him with manslaughter relating to the incident.

“Our life has been destroyed,” Pope said. “I want them to make changes to El Camino. It is a very dangerous road. There is no business for a six-lane road to cut through campus … There is so much crossing of the street, and it is so dangerous.” 

Pope’s case isn’t an isolated incident. In May, the driver of a white Mazda struck another SCU student, who needed to be transported to the hospital following the collision. Shortly after the incident, some SCU students attended the planning commission meeting to inquire about what is being done to mitigate hazardous conditions.

Over the past 20 years, El Camino Real has been one of the deadliest corridors in California, according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). From 2002 to 2022, there were 58 fatalities in Santa Clara County along El Camino Real.

Pope is suing Drake, Caltrans, Santa Clara County and the California Department of Transportation (DoT), claiming unsafe conditions caused his son’s death.

Additionally, a Change.org petition Pope started has more than 1,400 signatures. The petition calls on the city to take more immediate action to improve safety on El Camino Real.

“I don’t want to see another student get hit. That is what keeps me up at night,” Pope said. “This information is what can catalyze change. If this information doesn’t get out there, then there isn’t change. There are things that can be done.”

Many intersections with multiple pedestrian crashes are along El Camino Real, according to the city’s Pedestrian Master Plan, released in 2019. As part of the outreach for the plan, the public identified El Camino Real as a “high stress” road with challenging pedestrian crossings, most notably on the stretch between Lawrence Expressway and the San Tomas Expressway.

The Pedestrian Master Plan informed the city’s Vision Zero Plan, a comprehensive strategy to eliminate pedestrian fatalities, adopted in March. The Vision Zero Plan also identifies El Camino Real, in particular the stretch between Hart Avenue and Scott Boulevard, as a priority corridor with high collision rates requiring targeted investment in safer infrastructure.

The Vision Zero Plan sets its sights on eliminating pedestrian fatalities and serious injuries by 2050. From 2016 to 2023, crashes killed 51 people throughout the city, according to the plan.

While the council approved putting safety improvements in place, it rejected a proposal to add another senior civil service engineer, citing uncertainty surrounding how the city would pay for it. So, while political ambition to eliminate traffic fatalities is there, it’s unaligned with available resources to make the road safe on a more immediate timeline. 

Contact David Alexander at d.todd.alexander@gmail.com