Yuma-area drivers, be careful out there!
Yuma weather never ceases to add adventure to our lives! Hopefully this is not the start of another spring and we have to do summer again. I know the crops are enjoying the warm days and cool nights, although the wind last week was challenging.
As I was working on a project at my church on 3rd Street last week, I was watching the traffic going past during breaks. These were my observations: the growers in the Yuma area are working diligently to keep the agricultural traffic off the main thoroughfares in town. As I watched, there were tractors with implements wider than the existing lane, tractors alone, service trucks, crew busses and porta-potties, semi-trucks with trailers carrying transplants, numerous farm pickups and additional agricultural traffic. Giss Parkway or 3rd Street, depending which end of it you are on, has always acted as a collector street for the farming industry in Yuma. Slower moving, oversize and awkward loads have tried to avoid the high traffic streets when moving from the Gila Valley to the Yuma Valley or over to the Bard and Winterhaven areas.
As I have driven from Pacific Avenue to 4th Avenue off Giss Parkway/3rd Street since the completion of the new roundabout intersection at the North entrance to the mall, it caused me to question the need for three roundabout intersections
in less than two miles of road and all of them with different diameters. I was uncomfortable driving my SUV through the various intersections because I constantly need to adjust my speed and turning angles to accommodate the roundabouts. I have great respect for the drivers of a sprinkler truck with two ‘wiggle wagons’ on the back through the
obstacle course of Giss Parkway much less oversized equipment. After other roundabouts were constructed with vertical curbs in other areas of town, the engineers quickly realized more accidents were caused than if they changed them to the rolled curbs now used. If a vehicle misjudges the turn, they can just drive over the middle of the
roundabout and it is obvious that it often happens looking at the tire scuffs on the road.
In addition, Yuma has a thousand or more trucks a day on the roads during produce harvest season headed to the coolers to pick up their loads and again Giss Parkway is the preferred route. The road markings are not well maintained and there
is inadequate signage to warn drivers who have never been to Yuma of the road challenges they face.
To complicate the traffic further, Giss Parkway is the main access to downtown Yuma and the Yuma Territorial Prison. When you add to the mix of traffic elderly drivers RVs, motor homes and all sorts of cars and trucks going to enjoy the “Old
Town” area, it can be pretty frightening. Thank you to all the skilled and brave operators of the equipment and vehicles needed to support our amazing $3.4 billion Yuma County agriculture!
Be careful out there!