Desert Hot Springs breaks ground on road improvement project; residents share concerns
DESERT HOT SPRINGS, Calif. (KESQ) - The City of Desert Hot Springs is breaking ground on a road improvement project along Hacienda Avenue, a main road that crosses through the center of the city.
City officials say the improvement project, which is set to continue through March 2026, will bring new bike lanes, better street lighting, landscaped sidewalks, striped crosswalks, and ADA ramps to improve accessibility.
The goal: improve safety on the city's roads.
"This is one of many roads when I became mayor nine years ago that we really wanted to focus on and make safe for our community," says Scott Matas, the mayor of Desert Hot Springs.
Along with the Hacienda project, Matas also says improvements made on Palm Drive have reduced pedestrian casualties in the city — a metric that he says the city was one of the leaders in ten years ago.
The city says the portion of Hacienda Avenue being improved extends from West Drive to Tamar Drive, which is a 1.3-mile stretch of the road that runs through the center of the city.
But some residents have taken to social media to point out other portions of that road, like near Julius Corsini Elementary School, need improvements, too.
Mayor Scott Matas says those residents should wait for the project's second phase: "We heard our residents loud and clear. When we actually received a grant for this first phase, we went immediately back out looking for grant funding and we received that not long after that. Unfortunately, the process with the state of California sometimes lingers. And so this phase next phase will start in about a year."
The second phase of the project will stretch from Tamar Drive to Long Canyon Road, which is the remainder of Hacienda Avenue.
Deputy City Manager Daniel Porras says these improvements are what residents have been asking for. "The feedback has been missing improvements. We don't have any infrastructure, so we have no sidewalks, no curb and gutter, no streetlights, some missing bike lanes. So the feedback has been we're... they’re excited to actually see some infrastructure come into play."
City officials hope to do more in the future, too.
"Beyond this project, we hope to continue. We’re gonna continue on other arterials, such as Two Bunch, Dillon, Little Morongo, Pierson. So we do want to continue this type of project in other areas of the city as well," Porras hints.
