Welcome to the Jamieson Canyon half-mile speedway

By DAN ROSS

Have any of you taken on the challenge of getting out on the newest half-mile racing straight-away in Solano County?

What, you don’t know about the Jamieson Canyon races?

Here, let me fill you in.

About a week or so ago, the new “truck” lane opened on Jamieson Canyon Road, aka Highway 12, for vehicles coming off of I-80 in Solano County heading towards Napa.

The word truck is in quotes because, in my eight days of using Jamieson Canyon since the lane opened, I’ve come across more trucks in the passing lane than in the truck lane.

Mostly what I come across, though, are other cars and SUVs driving 10-25 mph faster than they did before the lane opened.

Is this because there’s less traffic?

Nope, it is because people are now racing one another to the top of the hill where the half-mile truck lane ends, seeing who can get there first, who can cut off others first, who can get their version of the checkered flag.

I’ve experienced this before, along a stretch of roadway in Washington state where a truck lane opened on a highway that previously has no such passing zone for about 15 miles.

Traffic normally moved at 55-60 mph along that stretch of highway. Once the truck lane opened, traffic accelerated to 65-75 mph for that quarter-mile run up that hill.

Friday on Jamieson Canyon I set my cruise control at 68 and moved in to the truck lane as soon as I reached it to see what would happen with the other drivers near me. Guess what happened.

I counted 11 cars zoom past me in a desperate race by each of them to reach the top before my crawling-along-at-68 car got there.

The posted speed limit, by the way, is 55.

Once the truck lane opened, I guess Caltrans included some sort of roadway-sensor that grabbed each car’s radio and secretly began playing Sammy Hagar’s “I Can’t Drive 55,” as incentive to race.

My radio doesn’t work. No checkered flag for me.

Dan Ross is NapaValleyRegister.com’s Online Editor. He writes on local, state and national issues when he’s not trying to avoid speeding drivers on Highway 12. He can be reached at dross@napanews.com or 256.2264.

Correction: An earlier version of this column stated the truck lane was in SolanoCounty, an error caused by a less-than-stellar self-editing process...

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