Fatal crash pinpoints Pinal’s weakest link

A deadly crash that shut down Hunt Highway for 12 hours on Wednesday left thousands of area commuters cut off from their schools, businesses and jobs, highlighting Pinal County’s significant need for transportation expansion and improvements.

VIDEO: Armed robbery suspect killed in collision

GRAPHIC: See accident statistics and a map of Hunt Highway

Hunt Highway is a two-lane lifeline serving more than 46,000 people in the Santan area south of Queen Creek. There are virtually no routes in and out of the area when Hunt Highway is shut down.

Click to view accident statistics and a map of the Hunt Highway

Local resident Bambi Sandquist said action needs to be taken on the highway.

“We have to do something. Whether we borrow money or get federal help, something needs to be done,” she said.

But no relief appears in sight, despite renewed political interest in finding ways to pay for new roads and highways throughout the county, including the Queen Creek and north Pinal County areas.

Transportation planners have outlined a number of new freeways that would give drivers alternative routes in the area — but nobody has yet determined how to pay for them. One north-south freeway would run from U.S. 60 in Apache Junction to Interstate 10 near Eloy, and the Williams Gateway Freeway would run east-west from that freeway to U.S. 60 south of Gold Canyon. Those freeways have no funding, except for a small part of the Williams Gateway Freeway.

Wednesday’s fatal crash occurred about 2:30 a.m. on the highway just west of Thompson Road.

A man suspected of robbing a QuikTrip convenience store at Gary Road and Hunt Highway was speeding away from sheriff’s deputies when he tried to pass two cars. He died after smashing head-on into a semitrailer, sheriff’s spokeswoman Vanessa White said.

Sheriff’s officials did not release the suspect’s identity. It was the second fatal crash in the past two weeks to shut down the highway, revealing the weakness of the county’s transportation network. On April 25, a man was killed and a woman seriously injured after a head-on collision at Arizona Farms Road.

Hunt Highway was once a rural back road running from Phoenix to Florence that wasn’t entirely paved until the late 1990s and has since become overwhelmed by the area’s explosive growth.

Pinal County is the third-fastest-growing county in the nation. And that boom has resulted in a spike in traffic and crashes resulting in serious injuries and deaths.

Statistics show there were 203 crashes on Hunt Highway in 2007 — more than a 650 percent increase since 2003.

On the most heavily traveled stretch of the highway — from Ellsworth Road to Bella Vista Drive, spanning five miles — there were more than 100 crashes in 2007.

Santan-area resident Brad Hedman said the highway is notorious for morning and afternoon headaches.

“It’s terrible and always backed up,” he said. “There are always accidents, and it seems like helicopters or police are there every week.”

Sheriff’s officials recently stepped up speed enforcement efforts and have adjusted speed limits on the perilous stretch of road. However, those moves have only marginally improved safety, according to department statistics.

Closure of a 3 1/2-mile stretch of a major arterial road Wednesday caused malaise for residents, businesses and local school districts.

Pinal County resident Pat Lake said the crash delayed her more than 30 minutes during a gridlocked commute.

“It took me 45 minutes to travel what would normally take me 10 minutes,” she said.

When Hunt Highway shuts down, residents flock to minor roads like Gary and Bella Vista roads and Ironwood Drive, which lead commuters to their jobs in Maricopa County.

Sharon McHugh, spokeswoman for the Coolidge School District, said 42 students were unable to access Mountain Vista Elementary School, at Hunt Highway and Mountain Vista Boulevard.

“The buses couldn’t get through,” she said. “They ended up turning them around. They couldn’t get close.”

Edd Hennerley, the Queen Creek Unified School District’s transportation director, said he ended up driving a bus to get children to school because five drivers couldn’t make it to work.

“We told our office staff to forget what you’re doing,” he said. “We went out and got everything covered.”

One of the few business in the area, the San Tan Flat restaurant, had its access to the Hunt Highway business blocked for several hours. It killed the lunch business for the day, said owner Dale Bell.

“We had no business this afternoon,” he said. “Zero.”

Pinal County spokeswoman Heather Murphy wrote in an e-mail that Hunt Highway widening is in the county’s plans and is a “priority,” although the county has no cost estimates for the project.

She said work to complete Empire Road as a bypass must happen first.

The first phase will widen Hunt from Empire to Thompson to five lanes, Murphy said.

A group of business leaders pushing for transportation projects is backing a statewide 1-cent sales tax to pay for projects like new north-south freeways. The TIME Coalition is working to put the matter on the November ballot, when Arizona voters would consider a 30-year tax that would raise $42.5 billion.

The plan would fund two new north-south freeways between Phoenix and Tucson, said Roc Arnett, a coalition member and president of the East Valley Partnership.

The precise details haven’t been revealed, but Arnett said the new highways would ease congestion during normal times — and provide critical alternative paths if a crash or other emergency closed one of the roads.

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