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UPDATE/CLARIFICATION, Oct. 9:

After this post was published, the Outpost spoke with Cutten resident Jim Martin, who, as a Caltrans transportation engineer in the late 1960s and early 1970s, was put in charge of designing the proposed Eureka bypass. In a phone conversation he offered some firsthand information about the process.

“We looked at all kinds of alternatives,” Martin said. This included a bypass through the Cutten area and the route across the Samoa Peninsula, though the latter was quickly dismissed as too expensive. (A bridge over the mouth of Humboldt Bay would have to be tall enough to accommodate big shipping vessels.)

Martin said he and his team conducted “a heckuva travel study” that involved stopping cars and interviewing drivers about where they were coming from and where they were headed.

What they learned was that Eureka was a so-called “terminal city,” meaning most drivers heading north from San Francisco were stopping here at least for a pit stop; same deal with drivers headed south from Portland. And most of the region’s commercial trucking stopped in Eureka, too.

Bypassing downtown entirely would only have taken about 20 percent of the traffic off of 4th and 5th streets, Martin said. 

He and his team eventually came up with a design to keep Hwy. 101 running through Eureka but elevated to ease traffic flow on surface streets. 

At the southern end of the city, the causeway would have run near what’s now the Bayshore Mall, with an interchange at Koster Street (near what’s now Costco). The route would then have crossed above Broadway near Washington St. (current location of Leon’s Car Care Center), with the elevation then lowering a bit through downtown. A “split-diamond interchange” would have been built near the Eureka Inn.

“We even worked with the city on plans to have a Victorian village [assembled] near the Ingomar,” Martin said. Caltrans had purchased a right-of-way through downtown, and the plan was to salvage all of the historic homes along that route and relocate them to the northern end of Old Town by the Carson Mansion.

As for the state budget woes that ultimately doomed the project, Martin placed the blame not on the national oil crisis but rather on former California Gov. Jerry Brown and his administration, which directed financial resources toward mass transit projects in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area.

After years of effort and millions spent working with the city and the Army Corps of Engineers, Caltrans eventually had to relinquish the right-of-way and give up on the project. 

To this day, Martin laments the fact that his design was never built.

“It would have been perfect,” he said.

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Original post:

It doesn’t necessarily make sense for the main north-south highway through Humboldt County to cut directly through the middle of its most populous city. In fact, Hwy. 101 would probably skirt around Eureka, one way or another, if it weren’t for the oil crisis of 1973.

Five decades ago, Caltrans considered a variety of options to divert Hwy. 101 around the city. Alternatives included an elevated causeway similar to the recently constructed Willits bypass and a route funneling traffic westward along the jetties, crossing a bridge over the mouth of Humboldt Bay.

But the oil embargo led to state budget woes, so the plans were eventually scrapped, which means that, to this day, the highway plows right through downtown Eureka, with southbound traffic funneled onto 4th Street while northbound vehicles run parallel on 5th.

This route may benefit businesses along the corridor (just count the fast food joints), it has proven less than ideal when it comes to the safety of pedestrians, cyclists and even the humans behind the wheel. 

A new report called “Dangerous Downtown Streets,” published today by the local nonprofit Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities (CRTP), highlights the hazards for all modes of transportation on Eureka’s 4th and 5th streets.

While this stretch is only about a mile and a half long in either direction (representing 0.2 percent of the county’s road miles), it accounts for roughly 18 percent of the county’s pedestrian fatalities and serious injuries over the last decade, the report finds.

CRTP also includes some suggested “evidence-based solutions” to improve safety, including new traffic signals and other intersection improvements, though Executive Director Colin Fiske acknowledges that Caltrans is off to a good start with its South Broadway Complete Streets Project.

Scroll down for a link to the full report and a press release with links to a series of “point-of-view videos” filmed with wearable cameras.

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DOCUMENT: “Dangerous Downtown Streets”

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Press release from CRTP:

HUMBOLDT COUNTY, Calif.—Today, CRTP published a new report entitled “Dangerous Downtown Streets: Safety Problems and Solutions for Eureka’s 4th & 5th Street Corridor (US-101).” The report identifies safety hazards for pedestrians, bicyclists, bus riders, and motorists by reviewing official police-reported crash data, crowdsourced street safety reports from the Street Story platform, and the findings from walk audits in the corridor conducted in October 2024 and a bicycle safety audit conducted in May 2025.

The report finds that, despite representing only about 0.2% of the county’s road miles, the corridor has been the site of 18% of the county’s pedestrian fatalities and serious injuries in the last decade, meaning the rate of pedestrian fatalities and serious injuries per mile is 90 times the county average. The corridor also sees 4% of all bicyclist serious injuries (20 times the county average) and 3% of motorist serious injuries and fatalities (15 times the county average). The walk and bike audits and Street Story reports confirm that, along with Broadway, this is one of the most dangerous corridors in the region, especially for people walking and biking.

In conjunction with the release of the report, CRTP has also produced point-of-view videos using wearable cameras, documenting the experiences of pedestrians and bicyclists in the 4th & 5th Street corridor. These include videos from perspectives that are often underrepresented, including a child and people with disabilities.

“The local community has known how dangerous this corridor is for a long time,” said CRTP Executive Director Colin Fiske. “Unfortunately, not nearly enough has been done about it. We really appreciate Caltrans’ recent actions to improve some of the corridor’s crosswalks, which will result in meaningful safety gains. But much more significant action is needed to make this corridor truly safe. We call on Caltrans to put safety first and begin the process of redesigning these streets now. We can’t wait for more people to die before we take this problem seriously.”

Important hazards identified for all modes of transportation in the 4th and 5th Street corridor include high traffic speeds, as well as hazards related to high speeds, such as failure to yield (right-of-way violations) and traffic signals and signs violations (such as running red lights). Additional serious hazards include visibility limitations for motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists, the complete lack of bicycle infrastructure, and unpredictable driver behavior.

The report recommends a variety of evidence-based solutions for these safety hazards, including new traffic signals and bicycle and pedestrian intersection improvements. The biggest change recommended by the report is the removal of a general (car and truck) traffic lane from the current street design on each street and the use of the resulting street space to provide a separated, protected bikeway. This change would produce significant safety improvements for all street users resulting from reduced speeds, more predictable driver behavior, protection for bicyclists and pedestrians, and reduced crossing distances for pedestrians.

“The South Broadway Complete Streets Project currently under construction is a good start toward making the US-101 corridor in Eureka safer for everyone,” said Fiske. “We continue to advocate for Caltrans to fund and build the other two planned safety projects that will improve the rest of Broadway right away. But this other part of the corridor—4th and 5th Streets—is also very dangerous, and can’t be ignored.”

Appendices to the report can be viewed at https://transportationpriorities.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Appendices-to-Dangerous-Downtown-Streets.pdf.

Point-of-view videos can be watched at https://tinyurl.com/4th5thPOV.