Santa Clarita’s engineers said a recent look at the city’s busiest intersections indicates local traffic volumes are pretty consistent with last year’s in terms of where Santa Clarita cars travel the most.
The city’s busiest intersection, Newhall Ranch Road and Bouquet Canyon Road, reported a count of 113,400 vehicles each day, based on a 24-hour count taken in March, which was down from last year’s high of 117,100.
For reference, the stretch of Interstate 5 near Valencia Boulevard — one of the most heavily trafficked in North L.A. County based on Caltrans data — reports about 171,000 vehicles every day heading north and 149,000 heading south.
City engineers also said that, based on the number of reported crashes, all the city’s major intersections fall below the state’s standard anticipated rate for an intersection, which is based on vehicle volume.
The city frequently evaluates its crash data with officials from the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, according to an email Monday from Joel Bareng, senior transportation engineer with the city.
“City staff routinely analyze collision data to identify intersections and roadway segments with recurring collision patterns. Evaluations consider not only the number of collisions, but also factors such as collision severity, type (e.g. rear end, broadside, pedestrian, bicycle) and contributing factors,” he wrote. “When recurring patterns indicate opportunities for improvement, the city evaluates potential engineering or operational changes. These may include roadway improvement projects, signal timing adjustments, signing and striping enhancements or other safety measures.”
Bareng described the crash rate as a benchmark for evaluation, adding that for a standard “suburban four-legged signalized intersection,” that figure is 0.55 crashes per million vehicles entering the intersection.
For the city’s busiest intersection at Newhall Ranch Road, that figure is 0.29 collisions, based on 10 reported collisions during the year.
The city’s next four busiest intersections remained the same as they were in 2025, based on the data provided by the city, with some roads seeing a slight increase.
The second-busiest intersection, Soledad and Bouquet canyon roads, also known as Bouquet Junction, had the highest crash rate for any of the city’s busiest intersections, with a rate of 0.47, based on 13 collisions reported in the city’s data, from about 91,700 daily vehicle trips.
That’s the same collision rate found at Sierra Highway and Via Princessa, despite seeing about 30% fewer vehicles as the city’s seventh-busiest intersection with 63,200 vehicle trips.
The third-busiest intersection, Newhall Ranch Road and McBean Parkway, reported about 86,900 vehicles in a 24-hour period, and saw 11 crashes, for a 0.42 collision rate.
In looking at the data, Mark Hunter, a city transportation planning analyst, said fluctuations in volumes between 5% and 10% in a 24-hour count are common due to the myriad of factors that can influence traffic on any given day, such as an event, an emergency or construction near a surrounding arterial.
The city takes all of its traffic counts between Tuesday and Thursday to try to cut down on those factors, Hunter said in a phone interview last week.
The safest intersection on the list, based on reported crashes? Soledad Canyon and Whites Canyon roads in Canyon Country, according to the city’s data.
That intersection sees 79,400 vehicle trips daily, nearly five times the number of vehicles that can fit in Dodger Stadium (16,000). During the past year, the city recorded two crashes there, for a crash rate of 0.08.
