By Charles Crowe, Staff Writer
San Quentin residents walking, running, working out, or just getting fresh air share the paved areas of the prison’s Lower Yard with a considerable amount of vehicular traffic.
Police cruisers and electric-powered carts, medical transport vans and ambulances, an 18-wheeler delivering an MRI trailer, buses coming and going from R&R, delivery trucks and forklifts, dump trucks and cement mixers, and cranes and construction-related vehicles compose the wheeled menagerie.
Traffic has been unusually heavy this past year. There is construction adjacent to East Block, part of the transformation of San Quentin from state prison to rehabilitation center. That work accounts for the cement mixers, dump trucks, cranes, and other vehicles heading to the construction site.
Residents circumnavigating the yard are on alert as they pass through the paved area between the baseball field and the big wall, looking over their shoulder and favoring the edges because they know they are likely to encounter a vehicle ahead or behind.
To get a sense how much traffic there is, San Quentin News counted vehicles on the Lower Yard on three different days, each time for two hours. The approach was strictly anecdotal, not at all scientific, and purposely timed to count during the heaviest traffic hours.
The counts took place on weekdays and second-watch hours when medical traffic is especially high, construction work is bustling, and maintenance workers are busily scurrying around in their electric carts. A reporter counted 130 vehicles in those six hours, about one vehicle every three minutes, more than 20 per hour on average.
San Quentin residents seem to take the situation in stride. Luis Gonzalez leaned against the wall across from canteen to make room as a large cement mixer crawled past on its way to the construction zone. Gonzalez didn’t seem to mind.
“We can’t do anything about it so we just have to deal with it,” he said.
For those who have lived on yards where the presence of even a single vehicle meant yard recall, sharing their recreation space with cars, trucks, forklifts and electric carts is a novel experience.
Darren Settlemyer has been on yards where you had to get down for the presence of a vehicle, even a little electric cart. He doesn’t mind the “vehicle on the yard” scenario at San Quentin.
“I’m grateful that we have access to this yard when a vehicle is present,” said Settlemyer. He said that the arrangement works best when drivers and pedestrians are considerate of one another. He expressed wonder at scenes of individuals stopping to talk in the middle of the most heavily traversed area, seemingly oblivious to the traffic that invariably comes.
Most vehicle operators are considerate of pedestrians, announcing their presence with a polite tap on the horn and moving slowly through the congested area. And most pedestrians seem to understand their responsibility to be alert and to get out of the way so vehicles can pass safely and easily.
On balance, it works. While counting, the reporter saw only two instances of obviously angry or disgruntled drivers or pedestrians. One person walking the yard gave a special high sign to a car that had passed him moments before. Perhaps a horn blast that he thought was less than courteous startled him.
A delivery truck driver who had his window rolled down muttered invectives about a cement mixer that had entered the narrow passage at the same time from the other end.
The East Block construction project won’t last forever and traffic serving that work will end. Lower Yard traffic will return to its usual level, much greater than on most yards, but manageable when drivers and pedestrians are mutually aware and considerate.