AnonymousSource: City of Santa Barbara
The City is taking steps toward eliminating severe injuries and deaths caused by vehicle collisions. Two Vision Zero Safety Restriping projects seek to address known collision patterns along Las Positas Road and Cabrillo Boulevard.
A Vision of Zero Vehicle Collisions
The goal of the City’s Vision Zero strategy is to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries in the City while increasing safe, healthy, and equitable mobility for all. This week, the City will complete the first two projects of Vision Zero: the restriping of Las Positas Road and Cabrillo Boulevard, which are Vision Zero Priority Corridors.
The Las Positas project is expected to eliminate collision patterns on Las Positas between McCaw Avenue and Alegria Road by creating a center lane for left-turning movements. One southbound lane will be converted into a center left turn lane between McCaw and Alegria. The northbound side will remain two lanes. In the Las Positas corridor, there are about 15 collisions every five years, in which about 15 Santa Barbarans are injured. This change encourages safer speeds and is not expected to increase traffic congestion.
The Cabrillo Boulevard project aims to prevent a demonstrated pattern of collisions in the “S” turn adjacent to the Andrée Clark Bird Refuge, as well as collisions related to motorists along East Beach making U-turns across Cabrillo. Scheduled pavement maintenance on Cabrillo offers the opportunity to reduce these known collision patterns, provide bike lanes, and increase the amount of parking spaces at East Beach. The additional parking spaces at the volleyball courts will be back-in angle spaces:
With this change how many eastbound car traffic lanes will there be on Cabrillo? It seems like there will only be one now. If that’s true then every time someone stops and backs up to park, eastbound traffic must come to a standstill.
@1:50 – Yes, both directions will be reduced to one lane. This will be a freaking disaster. It’s already in effect, too. Check out: https://www.facebook.com/JohnPalminteriNews/
That video shows that there is plenty of room to get around people parking. Traffic will not be brought to a standstill. I agree that people will still find ways to mess it up, there will certainly be a learning curve.
The area is about the least tricky there is, no side streets or intersections. Methinks they will need to add a cone barrier on the yellow centerline to keep people from pulling in forward coming from the other direction.
If the goal is to eliminate vehicle collisions, just eliminate vehicles. And bicycles. And pedestrians.
Am I seeing that picture correctly???? #1 car & #2 car are facing the same direction, but the arrow from the #2 car shows it going towards the #3 car and says “Reverse”…… ????? I’m thinking the picture is missing some clarifications . lol “back-in parking” …. I just watched my neighbor backing into a parking spot and it only took her 6 tries this time !! Last week, it took her about 20 tries to get into that spot, and it wasn’t a small spot either !!!!! Hopefully, the spaces are extra large / wide.
Cars trying to back into spaces on this stretch of road will be disastrous. Yikes!
Cars drive too close to the cars in front of them. When I was gonna parallel park, and when I saw a spot about 5 cars away, I put my blinker on, the car behind me kept tailgating, and they got really mad when they had to back-up, in order for me to get that parking spot.
MRTRUMP – huh? How do you “reduce vehicle usage” on the 101? It’s the ONLY highway in the area. How else are people supposed to drive from south of SB to north of SB (and vice versa)? Further, how would a wider 101 lead to more cars on the surface streets? If they have more room on the 101, there’s no need to jump off to avoid traffic.
Mr Trump must be a city planner with the goal of building apartments with no parking so that people have to get rid of their cars. That is the only way you will reduce traffic on the 101.
Let’s see, they say that eliminating 1 of 2 lanes on a portion of the “south”bound Las Positas will not increase congestion. I have $100 that says that all of the traffic trying to merge into 1 lane at the exit of Loreto Plaza will definitely cause a backup there. This close to the wrongful conclusion of the County when they said their solar panel project on the hill behind the jail would have no visual impacts. Also similar to the City closing one lane on Mission and then letting people make left turns from the open lane. Pretty big backup there on Saturday due to this. Avoid that area if you can.
First- Caltrans, the City of Santa Barbara and the County of Santa Barbara all determined the 101 freeway widening would induce growth in traffic volumes. That is in the project’s EIR. Second- The state, city and county can reduce traffic volume by encouraging people who live east (south) of the widening project area to take jobs in their own communities instead of commuting into Santa Barbara and Goleta.
1. Signal 2. Stop 3. Reverse 4. Crash
I agree with you on this merging into 1 lane. I was just out there this morning while they are doing work… south bound is currently one lane and it was backed up from the 101 all the way to los positas.
Plus, people coming from the bird refuge direction, driving toward the wharf, will spot the space across the street–facing them because of the reverse angle–and they will turn left to pull head in, singing hallelujah for their luck.
Then good luck to everybody else when they go to back out facing the wrong way later.
Writing tickets for parking that way won’t prevent this behavior.
Why couldn’t they do a test with this in a less tricky area first?
MRTRUMP – so just “create jobs” and industry and all that supports and requires a workforce for these new “jobs” for those who live south of SB? Yeah, good luck creating tens of thousands of jobs south of SB and then requiring people to work where they live….
Creating jobs south of Santa Barbara County to provide employment to people currently commuting into Santa Barbara and Goleta is being studied by the County of Santa Barbara Government. They just approved $700,000 to pay for the study.
I really love the comments here. “Parking a car is gonna be a disaster” … How do I drive on a road? What happens if people swerve across in the opposing direction to park? (and learn quick when they leave, that they are going the wrong way when they leave) How do I refill my blinker fluid? and what does the blinky light in front of me on the other persons car mean? Is the world coming to an end? Why can’t the City keep 2 lanes, so that I can drive freely; only to go another quarter mile until its one lane again? How long does a comment section have to be to mention Trump? It’s no wonder why the line at the DMV is so long.
Had to give EHDAT a thumbs up for humor. Wait till the curb extension haters find this thread 🙂