Traffic Projects

[ Quoted from "Roads More Traveled," SB INDEPENDENT, February 15, 2007 ]

Michael Self of Santa Barbara Safe Streets attracted about 70 transportation partisans from both sides of the “traffic calming” debate to a public forum on February 9. Self has emerged as Santa Barbara’s most tireless critic of roundabouts and other City Hall efforts to “tame” the automobile. Libertarian Randal O’Toole of the Cato Institute described “the dark side” of Portland’s acclaimed alternative transit system and offered high praise for Houston, often regarded by urban policymakers as an icon of runaway growth. Santa Barbara City Councilmember Das Williams stressed that the rival camps must work together to secure any congestion relief grants.

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The Santa Barbara City Council gave the thumbs-up to a $50 million package of freeway and street improvements designed to relieve congestion between Milpas Street and Hot Springs Road. Among those improvements will be a new roundabout between the bird refuge and Old Coast Highway, a new southbound lane, two northbound auxiliary lanes to facilitate merging onto the freeway, and a new underpass at Cacique Street connecting residents of the lower Eastside to the waterfront. Construction is projected to begin in March 2008 and last for four years, during which time freeway congestion will be exacerbated and safety lanes will be occupied by construction equipment and crews.

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Now that he’s head of the Assembly Transportation Committee, Santa Barbara’s State Assemblymember Pedro Nava is beating the bushes to secure $150 million to help alleviate the traffic bottleneck that’s made life a living hell for anyone trying to get to or from Carpinteria during rush hour. Specifically, Nava hopes to secure a chunk of funding from the multibillion-dollar Proposition 1B bond measure just passed to address freeway problems that afflict the stretch from Mussel Shoals in Ventura County to Casitas Pass in Carpinteria. While Nava has yet to secure the money, it’s expected he will.

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The Ortega Hill Project, paid for with $5 million of Measure D funds, will officially open with a February 21 ceremony at 10 a.m. The project consists of an auxiliary freeway lane that gives drivers entering northbound 101 from the Evans Avenue onramp in Summerland more time and distance to gain speed before merging with traffic. A new bike path next to the project now connects Carpinteria and Santa Barbara, giving cyclists an alternative to the freeway shoulder and hilly side streets.

The Santa Barbara Independent :: news :: Roads More Traveled

Traffic Workshop

[ Excerpted from SB Edhat, Feb 10, 2007 ]

Feeling Congested? Traffic Workshop offers Relief

By Cheri Rae

A citizen-organized workshop focused on the issues of transportation, growth and the future of Santa Barbara was held Friday morning at Mulligan's Cafe. Among those in attendance were Mayor Marty Blum; City Council Members Brian Barnwell, Helene Schneider, and Das Williams; city transportation department head Rob Dayton, and neighborhood advocates including Sally Jordan, Judy Ishkinian and Gary Earle. They - and the 65 registered attendees - heard presentations by a diverse panel of individuals with interest and expertise in traffic problems - and some solutions.

Das Williams presented "Do Everything: A Multi-Pronged Attack on Gridlock," during which he urged groups to work together to address the issue of traffic gridlock. Citing his own use of a combination of transport options, in any given week - taking the bus, using his personal car, carpooling and walking - he suggested individuals attempt to facilitate a "multi-modal" approach to transportation options.

MTD representative David Damiano offered an overview of the historical, current and future of public transit in Santa Barbara... Today's MTD provides 23,000 weekday passenger trips; it owns 100 vehicles, and operates 30 routes with 852 bus stops...

Portland resident Randal O'Toole, author of "The Vanishing Automobile and Other Urban Myths," took issue with many modern local planning practices, including subsidized high-density housing, mixed use and traffic calming devices. Citing $65 billion annually as the nationwide cost of congestion, he suggested a few solutions, including coordination of traffic signals; increased capacity on highways paid for by tolls; instituting privatized transit systems and zoning by neighborhood homeowners' associations.

Longtime cycling consultant and transportation engineer, John Forester, author of "Bicycle Transportation: A Handbook for Transportation Engineers," discussed Cycling Safety and Road Design. His primary point is that cyclists can and should obey traffic laws, and operate according to the rules of the road - they should not be forced to the side of the road, on bikeways, bike paths or bike lanes. He noted calming devices like 'bulbouts' pose particular dangers for cyclists, especially when they are placed in unexpected places...

A lively question-and-answer session followed the presentations.

Sponsors included organizations: Santa Barbara Safe Streets; the Homeowners' Defense Fund; Thoreau Institute: Citywide Homeowners Association; Coalition for Sensible Planning; local businesses: Ayers Automotive and East-West Motors and individuals: Jim and Sharon Westby and John and Michael Self.

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Full text of the article can be found here:

Santa Barbara Edhat - Local News Story

Additional comments to the Edhat article can be found at:

Comments

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Ralph Fertig added:
>
>This morning the "Santa Barbara Safe Streets" group held a workshop
>called "An Inconvenient Path." It was subtitled "A workshop on growth,
>transportation, and the future of Santa Barbara."
>
>About 80 people attended, including Marty Blum, Das Williams, Helene
>Schneider, Brian Barnwell, Tony Nisich, Browning Allen, Rob Dayton, &
>probably some other City people whom I didn't see. There were 4
>speakers; I went mostly to hear John Forester, long-time advocate for
>educating bicyclists to ride as a vehicle user on streets, asserting our
>right to ride there while obeying all vehicle laws. I also knew that
>John felt that bike lanes & separate paths were unnecessary &
>undesirable, so I was thinking that he was invited to speak because of
>that view.
>
>Das Williams spoke, articulate as usual. "Gridlock is a sign of a
>corroding quality of life," he started. He went on "the automobile is no
>longer the solution, & it's often the problem." You don't have to give
>up the car, just drive less. The city's streets cannot be widened. The
>scale of the gridlock challenge is so big that no one approach will
>satisfy it. Peak oil is either here or will be in a few years -- it will
>definitely effect us all.
>
>The next speaker was Dave Damiano from the MTD. He gave an impressive
>PowerPoint presentation about what the MTD does, & what improvements in
>equipment & service are coming to attract more riders. Most of the MTD
>funding comes from Federal & California sources. The "fare box" income
>pays for 42% of the operating costs, high for a public transit agency.
>
>The third speaker was Randal O'Toole from Oregon. He definitely is
>against city planning. He showed lots of graphs & photos, lauding the
>automobile & the suburban single-family house, while deriding traffic
>calming, higher-density housing, & bus/rail transportation that is
>publicly subsidized. He did start out with a photo of himself on a
>bicycle & commented that he has always cycled; he did not subsequently
>deride bicycling or facilities for people who bike. We should encourage
>neighborhood organizations, he said, & give them control over future
>zoning & development in their areas. He showed pie charts showing how
>much US land is urban, how much is farm & open space -- then said that
>those who promote higher housing densities to save agricultural land are
>misleading, we have lot of land. During the Q&A period at the end, he
>noted how much land west of Santa Barbara was unused, & it could easily
>serve future housing -- resulting in groans from the audiance.
>
>John Forester was the final speaker. He noted that everybody walked to
>work before the streetcars changed US cities. The streetcars determined
>a spoke pattern of development radiating from the urban core. The
>bicycle complemented the streetcars by providing mobility between the
>spokes. He did say that "bikeways" did not make cycling safer, that with
>a good road network, cyclists do not need bikeways. He didn't define
>"bkeways," but he lumps bike lanes with bike paths in his term, although
>they are actually quite different. "In 15 hours, I can teach any 8 year
>old to bike better than an adult," he claimed. To my relief, he did not
>attack bike lanes. Overall, he spoke favorably about bicycling, although
>he thought that it does not have the potential to relieve much traffic
>congestion.
>
>During the Q&A period, Randal did express approval of "bike boulevards"
>that are alternative streets parallel to busy arterials. John concurred.
> They give priority to bicyclists by blocking or deflecting through motor
>traffic every few blocks. The County is planning one for Sabado Tarde in
>Isla Vista, but there's nothing else locally.
>
>Somebody spent lots of money to organize this workshop. I don't know
>what their expectations were, but they did achieve government attendance.
> We will hear more in the future from them.
>
>~~ Ralph Fertig, President
>~~ Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition
>~~ www.sbbike.org

Granada Theatre

[ Excerpt from "Katzenjammer Dogs" By Nick Welsh, SB INDEPENDENT, February 1, 2007 ]

... I don’t know much about art, but I know what I don’t like. What I don’t like is the high-handed manner in which the people behind the Center for the Performing Arts have been acting. No doubt, they’re a great bunch. No doubt I’d like them a lot if I spent any time with them. And no doubt, I’ll love it when their wet dream comes true and the Granada Theatre is rehabilitated to its once and future splendor. Then we can all watch Broadway musicals, like Cats, ’til the cows come home. No doubt the center will act as an engine of cultural and economic vitality — as promised. What’s not to like? A couple weeks ago, the good folks at the center announced they’d like City Hall to write them a $500,000 check to help fix the Granada. The cost of construction is skyrocketing, they explained, and what was once billed as a $19 million project has now morphed into a $52 million nightmare. Because of the pressing schedule dictated by the availability of matching grants, they added, they didn’t have time to line up with everyone else looking for a handout from City Hall. Typically that line starts forming in late spring.

Some people around City Hall have their noses seriously out of joint over this, but I totally sympathize. My bills are piling up, too, and I could use half a million. But while I might entertain lofty delusions about my indispensability to the well-being of this community, I lack such high octane gazillionaires as Mike Towbes and Sarah Miller McCune on my board of directors. Likewise, I lack the presence of a single former mayor, while the center’s board boasts both Harriet Miller and Hal Conklin. When the center came forward with its request a few weeks ago, its boardmembers had every reason to think the most impertinent question anyone might ask would be how they wanted it — in thousand dollar bills or hundreds? It’s always been that way. But not this time. It turns out a lot of the other arts groups in town went bonkers and started working the phones. That’s because the center had already received $4.5 million from the city’s Redevelopment Agency, free and clear. And that doesn’t include the $25 million City Hall spent to build the Granada parking garage...

Given that the city’s Redevelopment Agency — the golden goose when it comes to arts and infrastructure funding — will go out of business in five years, people in the arts are understandably nervous. Furthermore, there’s no shortage of bad blood between the center folks — known as the Capital ‘A’ Arts crowd — and the small ‘a’ arts crowd. Competition for money is clearly at the root of it, but the Big A’s overweening sense of entitlement doesn’t help. In fact, after the center folks conducted a dog-and-pony show about the theater before the City Council a few years ago, Santa Barbara’s Air Pollution Control District was forced to declare an emergency smug alert. If the City Council were to give the Granada crowd $500,000, then maybe in exchange the council could require Granada patrons to pay a $1 surcharge on all tickets and use the proceeds to fund the arts organizations that have to scrimp and scrape to buy musical instruments for school kids and the like. That’s what the small ‘a’ crowd suggested. And that’s what councilmembers Grant House, Brian Barnwell, Das Williams, and Helene Schneider seemed to be thinking too. Sounds reasonable, but the powers backing the Granada feel they’re being picked on. “Why us?” they demand. To be fair, they’ve got big troubles yet they’re promising below-market rents to local performance groups. Even so, I can’t believe the extra buck is going to chase away a single customer. If you’re willing to spend $50 for a night at the opera, what’s $51?

If they get the $500,000, they’ll wind up with $5 million in direct subsidy, plus the parking garage. They hate it when you bring up the new Granada parking garage. That’s completely separate, they insist; the garage was in the works long before the Granada improvement scheme was ever hatched. True, but just barely. The fact is the Granada garage would never have been built were it not for the powerful push provided by the Granada’s board... The least the A crowd can do is give a little back. Call it a convenience tax. At a buck extra per ticket, it’ll be a long time before the city begins to break even. And as gestures go, it would be a nice one. But the Granada, I understand, would rather do without the money than accept such conditions. And in the interest of making nice, the council will give them the money. Like I say, I don’t know that much about art. But I do know what I don’t like.

— Nick Welsh

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To read the full column and comments posted at the SB INDEPENDENT, please go to:

KatZenJammer Dogs