GPS sending drivers the wrong way on Sonoma's backroads

Narrow, winding Trinity Road snakes up and over the Mayacamas Mountains from Glen Ellen to the Napa Valley - a beautiful but somewhat tortuous route of steep grades and hairpin switchbacks.

All too frequently, it also appears to be the fastest way to Napa, according to GPS directions in the hands of many big-rig drivers who increasingly are getting their long trucks hung up on the road’s banking curves.

What used to be a rare problem now occurs about once a month - although there were two in two days earlier in August, including one huge moving van that blocked the paths of three fire engines heading up the hill to douse a fire.

“That one almost turned out to be a disaster,” said Wilbert Horne, chief of the Mayacamas Volunteer Fire Department .

Long gone are the folded street maps kept in glove boxes as GPS devices - short for Global Positioning System - have become commonplace among motorists and commercial drivers.

But the downside of the technology has residents along Trinity Road and other winding county byways saying they are increasingly worried about the threat that errant drivers and their vehicles pose.

In fire season, a jackknifed big rig or other stuck vehicle could mean the difference between an extinguished fire and a wildland disaster, fire officials said. Throughout the year, such accidents could cause delays that cost medical responders vital time in an emergency.

“We’ve had them block our station at the corner of Cavedale and Trinity. We couldn’t have gone anywhere,” said Horne, who has 55 years in the fire service including decades as a chief and 11 years leading Mayacamas volunteers.

Glen Ellen Fire Capt. Dan Pierce, whose crew responds to Trinity’s stuck rigs, said the longest incident so far lasted about six hours and involved a Southern California driver using his GPS. The driver got stuck on one corner, was freed by a big-rig tow truck and then became stuck on the next corner. Pierce, who has a license to drive such vehicles, finally got behind the wheel and drove the driver and the rig safely off the hill.

“He turned up Trinity Road pulling a 53-foot (trailer). That was no place to take anything like that,” Pierce said.

The issue has caused such concern it has led residents and fire officials to press for signs and a new county ordinance establishing hefty fines of about $700 for drivers caught attempting the route with longer trucks.

Two signs, at a cost of $10,000, went up in July. It remained unclear if they have made a difference.

“They have to be absolute idiots to go that way. We have gigantic signs on Highway 12 prohibiting that route,” said Tom O’Kane, Sonoma County’s deputy director for public works and transportation.

“We’ve had a couple of them (stuck) up there since we’ve put the signs there,” O’Kane said. “Just because your GPS says there is a connection doesn’t mean that is the best route to go.”

The same signs have been up for months on the Napa side of the road and the problem persists on that side of the hill, Napa CHP Sgt. William Bradshaw said.

Bradshaw said the problem is as bad or worse on the Napa side, which has its own set of challenging 90-degree turns. “These guys don’t pay attention. They drive on past them. The sign is the law and GPS is the advisory.”

Other, so-far unsuccessful efforts include attempts to get GPS mapping companies to block Trinity Road as a truck route, said fire and Sonoma County road officials.

“We’ll continue to work on it,” Horne said.

The other Sonoma County big-rig trouble spot is Laughlin Road, CHP Officer Jon Sloat said. Near the Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport, it’s the GPS route for trucks coming from River Road to the airport and adjoining business district.

While the vast majority of Laughlin Road is navigable, large trucks get stuck on a little bridge over Mark West Creek. As on Trinity Road, huge signs on River Road warn drivers not to go that way.

But they trust their GPS more than the signs, Sloat said. “It’s the GPS giving them these directions.”

The idea of a big-rig driver heading up mountainous Trinity Road makes residents shake their heads as it so quickly appears to be anything but a truck route.

“I feel like I would stop and think, ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this,’?” said 30-year Trinity Road resident Mark Molofsky. “It’s a life and safety thing.”

“They don’t come up with their good sense. They don’t even read the signs,” said Don “Swede” Thoreson, a 22-year resident who lives near one of the more notorious Trinity curves. He said he’s raised concerns with county officials, CHP officers, deputies and firefighters in both counties.

In Sonoma County, Trinity Road heads uphill from Highway 12 near Glen Ellen. It quickly looks like a back country lane, with failing patched pavement shaded by a canopy of very low-hanging tree limbs.

From Highway 12 to Highway 29 it traverses 13 miles of curving switchbacks, twists and steep rises totaling about 1,800 feet before plummeting in a series of “S” curves down into Oakville in the Napa Valley.

It’s also a popular route with experienced bicyclists and for a few years was a more challenging route on the Amgen Tour of California.

Until about three years ago, big-rigs on the mountain route were pretty rare, said Horne, whose fire department covers the top part of the road while Glen Ellen fire covers the first mile. Those that did get stuck had mainly come from the Napa County side, where drivers start to struggle after the Oakville Grade once they get to a one-lane bridge.

“Three years ago they put out a GPS for trucks and big rigs,” guiding drivers up and over Trinity Road as a quicker cross-county route from Sonoma Valley to Napa, Horne said.

As well as bringing more trucks, Trinity Road residents and area fire officials say GPS is adding other traffic - more tourists who take the road to get to the picturesque wine valleys on either side and workers who want to shave minutes off their commute or avoid backups in busier Sonoma Valley.

On a recent August afternoon, Santa Rosa resident Rich Andre had parked off Trinity Road in a standard-sized company van, checking his messages.

“My GPS sends me this way,” said Andre, who uses Trinity Road to get to Napa about once a month for work.

It saves about 10 minutes, he said. “I just go slow. Some people fly past me.”

The added traffic, with its speeding drivers who often cut the curves by moving across double yellow lines into the opposite lane, and increase in big rigs compounds the road’s increasing dangers, Horne said.

Firefighters fear serious trouble is coming.

It almost happened earlier this month when a Glen Ellen engine and two Cal Fire engines headed up the hill to aid Mayacamas volunteers responding to a car fire. En route, they rounded a corner and found their way blocked.

“It was quite a surprise,” Pierce said. ”We found the guy stretched across the road. It was blocking us from getting to the fire.”

Horne and a handful of volunteers were able to douse the fire before flames spread into nearby crackling dry brush. But the outcome could have been far worse, the chief said, because additional help was delayed by almost 30 minutes.

The Cal Fire engines backtracked down the hill and took another, longer route. The Glen Ellen engine had to bow out of the fire response and deal with the rig and the blocked road.

That truck driver, in a huge moving van, told a CHP officer and firefighters he was from Los Angeles, headed for Napa County.

While traveling east on Highway 12, his GPS told him to turn onto Trinity Road for the fastest route - so he turned.

“The GPS routing has been the case every time. They’re from out of the area. Quite often English is not their primary language,” Pierce said.

O’Kane said he’d considered putting up a third warning sign for Trinity, this one on Trinity Road. But he dismissed the idea due to the history of drivers ignoring warnings and said he has other road priorities in the county.

“We’ve put multiple signs on Laughlin; it did no good. We’ve got multiple signs out there (on Trinity) now. No good. Where does it stop?” O’Kane said. “We’ve done everything we can. We’re not going to stand there and yell at them when they make the turn.”

You can reach Staff Writer Randi Rossmann at 521-5412 or randi.rossmann@ pressdemocrat.com.