transportation
Eyes Wide Open Planners Play ‘Chicken’ over 101 Widening
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PAU L WELLM AN F I LE PHOTO
BY N I C K W E L S H ous one. If the City of Santa Barbara refuses to s high-stakes showdowns go, last issue Caltrans a coastal development permit Thursday’s Santa Barbara Planning for the freeway widening, then the project is Commission deliberations could dead. And as Commissioner Jordan put it, “It not have been more excruciatingly was clear from the meeting that if the vote for bureaucratic. But the stakes involved could not that permit were held next week, the outcome have been much higher. At issue is nothing less would not be favorable to Caltrans.” Despite the than the half-a-billion-dollar freeway widen- rhetoric, the commissioners and City Hall are ing slated to take place over the next 15 years on record in support of the freeway-widening between Ventura and the Fairview Avenue project in general, just not the specific projinterchange in Goleta. ect that Caltrans The Santa Barbara has proposed. The commissioners city planners unaniare hoping that mously insisted that Caltrans engineers Caltrans expand the and decision makproject description ers get the picture to include a new and wider railroad crossing before push comes at Cabrillo Boulevard to shove. Attempting to by the Andrée Clark Bird Refuge to accommake Caltrans’s modate not just bikes case was Gregg and pedestrians, but Hart, spokesperalso the additional lanes son for the Santa of traffic the widenBarbara County ing will generate. Those Association of lanes, they insisted, will G ov e r n m e nt s , be essential to hold the the county superextra motorists using agency that funCabrillo Boulevard as nels millions of a de facto southbound dollars of state and exit ramp. Without the federal road funds new lanes, they argued, to Santa Barbara traffic on Cabrillo will County and the back up to an unacceptcounty’s seven city governments. Hart able level. Likewise, they GRIDLOCK GALORE: The only thing — now running for the Santa Barargued, the freeway- messier than Highway 101 traffic is the widening project must bureaucratic warfare over how to fix it. bara City Council include a solution to — sought to disthe seven-way intersection problem now con- suade the planning commissioners and city founding drivers seeking to get on or off the traffic engineers from their present confronfreeway at Olive Mill Road. Lastly, they insisted tational course. By expanding the project defithat the Draft Environmental Impact Report nition to include these ancillary projects and (DEIR) prepared by Caltrans needed to explic- recirculating the environmental impact report, itly acknowledge that the freeway widening Hart warned, the project could be delayed as will have a significant adverse impact on many much as five years. “And that extra time is very Santa Barbara interchanges. In fact, morning big money,” he said. motorists driving north around the Mission Hart estimated a five-year delay would cost and Las Positas off-ramps will find peak-hour Caltrans $50 million in carrying costs alone. And as interest rates and construction costs gridlock is much worse than it is now. The current DEIR contains only one sen- go up, the problem only gets worse, he said. tence alluding to this and then in only the vagu- He agreed that the improvements demanded est of language. For these changes to be made, by the commissioners were, in fact, necessary, the commissioners insisted, the DEIR would but Hart insisted that they could and should need to be amended and then recirculated. be achieved as separate projects and without That’s something Caltrans desperately wants holding up the entire venture. to avoid. As it is, the EIR is already two years For his efforts, Hart got nowhere. City planbehind schedule, and further delays will cost ners recalled how the railroad bridge expanthe underfunded project millions of dollars. sion had been promised before by Caltrans No one from Caltrans, however, attended the when seeking approval for the Highway meeting. Perhaps that was a good thing.“I guess improvements just completed, but never delivthey were slapped down a little bit,” Planning ered. Hence Lodge’s stated lack of trust. The Commissioner Michael Jordan commented additional improvements sought by City Hall afterward. Fellow Commissioner — and former will cost millions, and the commissioners mayor — Sheila Lodge put it more bluntly.“We remain convinced that unless they are included in the project description itself, the money just don’t trust ’em.” In the five-dimensional Kabuki theater won’t be there. “The chances are between nil attending the freeway expansion approval and nonexistent there will be the funding,” said process, the Planning Commission meeting Commissioner Addison Thompson. “At least qualified as a mere gesture — but a deadly seri- that’s the way we read the tea leaves.” ■ sEPTEmbEr 12, 2013
THE INDEPENDENT
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