Caltrans and TAMC prepare to begin long-awaited Highway 101 safety projects, moving away from left turns across traffic.

Driving along Highway 101 from Chualar to Airport Road, just south of Salinas, making a left-hand turn during high traffic is a daunting task. Brief gaps in highway traffic provide drivers only seconds to make a move, leading to numerous collisions along the corridor, which was not designed to handle so many vehicles traveling at such high speeds.

“The corridor currently includes 11 at-grade intersections,” says Caltrans District 5 Project Manager Meg Henry. “What that means is that vehicles can turn left or right onto or off of Highway 101 mainline. As the county has grown – specifically points south of Chualar like Gonzales, Greenfield and Soledad – there are a lot more cars on the road.”

Henry describes how, during peak traffic hours, vehicles trying to turn left or make a U-turn off of the 101 have to wait longer as the line of cars behind them also grows, causing drivers to feel rushed and misjudge how fast the incoming traffic is traveling.

“They then will make riskier moves because they feel they’re in a hurry,” Henry says. “In tracking the collision history through that corridor, we found that, especially with the fatal collisions, they tend to involve trucks turning through those intersections.”

To enhance traffic flow and improve safety, Caltrans and the Transportation Agency for Monterey County have teamed up on the long-term, roughly $350 million South of Salinas Corridor Improvement Project. The project also includes the near-term South of Salinas Access Management Project or safety project, which calls to block left-hand and U-turns at 11 intersections along the dangerous eight-mile stretch of Highway 101, while right turns into and out of the side streets will remain. What the intersections will be transformed into by the end of the project is still to be determined.

Construction on the short-term safety project, weeks from going out to bid, is tentatively set to begin in fall 2026. Caltrans’ goal is to install temporary metal barriers at the intersections before March 1, 2027, when the busier traffic season begins.

“The safety project is a preliminary move toward what will become a full corridor improvement to stop those turns because we have an above-average amount of fatal collisions,” Henry says. “To be safe, we have to close all of the intersections through the corridor because otherwise we are just pushing the problem around.”

The long-term project, currently in the environmental review phase, includes relocation and reconstruction of the existing left-hand ramps at Abbott Street and the existing Chualar interchange.

The project also calls for the development of a new frontage road on both the east and west sides of the highway and the closure of six railroad crossings on the west side of Highway 101, which will ultimately be transformed from an expressway to a freewayby eliminating the left-hand and U-turns along the stretch.

“My hope is that this is a project that the community supports,” Henry says.