As Kaiser Permanente’s Santa Rosa campus grows, so do the traffic woes. It’s difficult for patients to get into and out of the campus without delay. We’re still waiting for a response from Kaiser Permanente representatives to this question from Road Warrior reader Judson, but city traffic engineers say they are well aware of the problem.

My beef and concern is the way the City of Santa Rosa is working with Kaiser Hospital in managing traffic at their main hospital entrance. Coming from the 101 headed East, it is the only entrance to the hospital available and it’s half as wide as it should be, especially for emergency vehicles.

The Kaiser entrance at the intersection of Bicentennial Way and Ventura Ave is a bottleneck for Kaiser doctors, employees and patients. The left turn lane waits far too long and doesn’t change often enough. I often have to sit through two light cycles before I am able to make the turn into Kaiser. The turn lane is too short also.

(Once inside the campus) the main entrance to the hospital en route to the front door requires going over a huge dip in the very narrow driveway, an abrupt stop sign that limits the number of cars that can enter at one time, and then a maize of turns back and forth and around just to get anywhere in there. I’m amazed the ambulances and EMTs put up with it. 

I’m hoping you may be able to help me with some ideas here about how to generate some interest in making the hospital entrance better?? — Judson

Rob Sprinkle, supervising traffic engineer for Santa Rosa, responds:

“We are already working with Kaiser with some of their internal circulation and how that may affect the entrance and some back-ups in the A.M. commute. I do have some ideas about the left turn into the site and some signal timing adjustments that may help.  That will take a little programming, but we will try to get to it soon.” 

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