SAN ANTONIO – Culebra Road is one of the most dangerous roads in the city and has long been on the radar of city engineers to deter accidents.
Mario Garcia works on Culebra Road, right across the street where a 40-year-old man was struck and killed while crossing Monday night. Garcia said he isn’t surprised.
“It’s always busy. It's always constant flow, and it’s hard to sometimes get out of here, trying to exit,” he said of the speeding and busy traffic flow.
Garcia said he sees people jaywalking in between crosswalks daily. The newest Z Crossing, which was installed two years ago, is doing little to slow down the illegal pedestrian crossing, he said.
“Police officers are always down the road, too,” he said.
Councilwoman Shirley Gonzales said because of the high-speed traffic and design, Culebra has always been a problem road. It goes from a neighborhood area to an arterial street, she said.
“People keep dying on Culebra, and we need to take immediate action to resolve the problem,” she said.
Gonzales said a lot of the deaths are around 24th to 36th streets, where there are a lot of people who walk from nearby homes.
“We try to make improvements on Culebra, but they are not significant enough. The fatalities keep piling up,” she said.
Gonzales said with some Texas Department of Transportation funding, the city has been working on improvements and more are planned. Since she took office five years ago, she said there have been more than 20 fatalities counted on Culebra Road.
“In the case of Culebra, it's clearly a design flaw. If it was not a design flaw, we wouldn’t see so many fatalities,” she said.
Adding more crossings and possibly a raised median could also potentially help, Gonzales said.