I-105 work putting slow cars in fast lanes, and vice versa.

Byline: Diane Dietz The Register-Guard

Construction on Interstate 105 has unintentionally created havoc by reversing the natural order of freeway traffic.

Construction signs tell drivers to slow to 45 mph and to move into the left lane. Conscientious drivers obey the signs and become what the hurry-up driver hates most: a slow driver in the fast lane.

So the hurry-up driver is whipping around the conscientious driver on the right.

`People aren't paying attention to all the orange signage and the speed zones and the cone patterns," said Eugene police officer David Natt. "They're acting as if nothing's going on.'

The trouble is, the reason traffic designers asked drivers to slow down and move left is because they've shortened the on-ramps, and they're counting on the right lane being relatively clear so that cars entering the freeway can merge safely.

But with impatient drivers passing on the right, it's not working. Entering drivers who don't have sufficient ramp length to get up to freeway speeds are forced into a lane where impatient drivers are frequently swerving around the conscientious drivers.

And accidents are happening at a faster rate on I-105 than in the same period last year. There were 11 crashes between this April 1 and May 17. Last year, it took the full two months to accumulate that many.

Passage on I-105 is only going to get more complicated as the construction project, which continues through August, proceeds with a series of altered lane lengths, changed lane locations and whole lane closures.

"As the situation changes, there will be another set of circumstances," said traffic designer Don Morris.

Many of this year's accidents are happening at the on-ramps, particularly at the bad merge zone on the I-105 westbound on-ramp at Country Club Road in Eugene.

Traffic designers initially shortened the normal 250-foot merge zone that entering drivers expect by about two-thirds, said Morris, the Oregon Department of Transportation work zone designer.

Sometimes, the front driver in a line of cars can't get up to speed, so he slams on his brakes and gets whacked by a car or two from behind.

The drivers in the rear cars don't realize they are in trouble - until it's too late - because they're craning their heads to see how they, too, are going to make the treacherous merge.

"You're just about to jump on a freeway and people are screaming by," said Justin Wright, a driver who complained to police about the on-ramp configuration after witnessing an accident.

"Muscle memory tells you you've got 5 to 6 seconds to merge, but really you've got to get on immediately," Wright said. "It's a near miss every time."

Morris, the traffic designer, said it's tough to know exactly what drivers are going to do. The merge distances on the foreshortened on-ramps would have been safe enough if the freeway traffic were doing 45 mph.

Designers believed that enough freeway traffic would move to the center lane to leave safe gaps for entering drivers.

On April 16, when officer Natt attended two accidents on that Country Club ramp not 40 minutes apart, he called ODOT to discuss the design of the road. One of the drivers, who drove her Dodge Neon into the rear of another car, happened to be an off-duty sheriff's deputy.

An ODOT official satisfied Natt that the signs and the cones were sufficient to alert the drivers, he said. And 12 days later, road crews came along with asphalt and lengthened the temporary on-ramp another carlength or two, although it's still not as long as permanent ramps characteristically are.

Now, it's driver beware, Natt said. `They've got the signage up. It's incumbent upon the public to respond to the signage.'

If drivers can't hack the reduced speeds and the surprise road configurations, they should `find another way to get from A to B,' Natt said.

Springfield resident Beckie Jones, however, said some drivers are carrying their straight-arrow observance of the construction zone signs and warnings too far.

Jones got behind a woman recently who drove at 40 mph - on the freeway - yards before the construction zone. Jones' patience was already under a strain. She says she was on the way home from the doctor's office and her 7-year-old daughter was in the back seat throwing up.

She nosed her fender up to the back of the slow-moving car, laid on her horn and motioned the driver into the slow lane.

"She was just holding people up. She was just hell bent on keeping everyone behind her at 40 miles per hour," Jones said. "Come on, let's not be hypervigilant about it. Let's obey the law and get on with it. It seemed so obvious she was trying to make a point."

The woman finally moved over and Jones pulled away.

But another Springfield resident, Bonnie Palmer, said it's not so easy to be a conscientious sign-abiding driver. She works a split shift and drives her gray 1990 Toyota Corolla to Eugene and back again twice a day.

"Whenever I dare doing the speed limit in the fast lane, I get tailgated to the extreme. People are insane, they're just insane," she said.

"I feel like I have no options. I'm doing what I'm supposed to do, but I'm getting pressure from people who don't think I shouldn't be doing what I'm supposed to do."

After a week or two complaining to friends, Palmer decided she'd do something to help herself. She bought some pink window paint, and brushed "45 mph on I-105" on her car's rear window, and that's helped some.

"I wanted to write `Yo, morons.' But then I decided to keep it straight and simple," she said.

CRASH FACTS

There were 98 accidents last year on Interstate-105, the 3.5-mile-long freeway spur that ferries people east and west between Eugene and Springfield.

Comparison: In April and May 2004 there were 11 accidents on I-105. This year, with the road under construction, the freeway had an identical number in about 1 1/2 months.

Fun in the sun: Last year, 68 percent of the crashes on that stretch of road happened when the weather was clear and in 65 percent when the pavement was dry

Casualties: Nobody died but three people were injured in the 98 crashes last year.

Sudden stops: Seventy-eight percent of last year's crashes were rear-end collisions.

- Source: ODOT Crash Analysis and Reporting Unit

ROAD BLOCKS

The Oregon Department of Transportation anticipates five major closures on I-105 this spring and summer:

Today-May 26*: Eastbound I-105 over the I-5 interchange and the Delta Highway ramp east.

May 31-June 8: Westbound I-105 over the I-5 interchange.

June 9-June 21: Westbound I-105 over Coburg Road.

June 22-July 1: Eastbound 1-105 over Coburg Road.

To be determined: Washington/Jefferson Bridge at the Delta Interchange.

Want more? See ODOT's www.keepusmoving.info Web site on the project. It includes detailed maps and construction schedules, plus information about detours and alternative ways to get around.

Tune in: ODOT promises to transmit up-to-the-minute road reports on radio station 1660 AM.

* Dates could shift based on weather or other factors.