UCSB Long-Range Plan Greeted with Skepticism in Goleta

» AN50 on 03.23.09 @ 12:00 PM

With regard to Phelps Road, I sympathize with the moms who see eminent danger if the road is opened. However their grip is with the County of Santa Barbara and the builder of the Stork ranch development.
A little perspective.
Phelps Road was part of a master planned major east west arterial serving the southern half of the Goleta valley. It was designed to be a 4 lane divided roadway that was to connect Ward Memorial Drive with Cathedral Oaks Road. The original alignment was contrived in 1964 and was part of the valley’s General Plan for traffic circulation. The purpose was to move UCSB traffic east and west and distribute that traffic among 4 interchanges with the 101 freeway via Cathedral Oaks Road–Phelps Road-Hollister Avenue, Glen Annie –Storke Road, Los Carnaros Road and Ward Memorial Boulevard. The east end of this alignment fell through when the Federal Government nixed the idea of widening Ward over the Goleta slough because it was still registered as a navigable water way and a new wider bridge would have to be too tall over it and still comply with airport approach guidelines. The county then reconfigured the alignment to match up with Mesa Road so that this important east west route could still serve the valley. Then the NIMBY’s of SB Shores got involved and the western end of the alignment was dropped so that a few people in a neighborhood could preserve their un-owned back yard. The remaining alignment was downgraded to collector arterial (2 lanes) and was planned to connect Pacific Oaks Road to Mesa Road. The University decided it was through trying to mitigate its tremendous traffic impact on the valley with road improvements since anything they proposed was protested. They then told the county that there would be no new connects from county roads to the campus traffic system. Storke Ranch was approved with the Phelps alignment ending in a cul-de-sac with that UCSB contention but with the County intention of making the connection to Mesa all along. The developer decided to avoid that part of the agreement and bet on the standard issue “do nothing” attitude prevailing in the valley and at UCSB. That brings us to the present.
The unfortunate events in this matter highlights a long standing insanity in the valley, not unlike the city of Santa Barbara, where we protest the fixes because we think it will change the character of the place. Meanwhile the events that necessitated the fix happen anyway and without the fix the character of the place is severely degraded. So if the UCSB LRDP has done anything at all it is to expose the utter failure of community participation in the planning process. We have allowed the individual to dictate what is good for the whole community when the individual is at best only interested in what affects them or at worse an ignoramus with no business dictating anything at all. The result is a community priding itself on stopping growth and all the bad things that come from growth like traffic jams, crowding, high cost of living, shortages of services, crime, pollution and environment degradation. Well 1 out of 7 ain’t bad, huh? No our dopy way of stopping growth was to cut off our nose to spite our face. So now UCSB wants to grow and they will in spite of all the anti-growth rhetoric here. They will just do it like they have for the last 40 years; with no mitigation of impacts because the loopy population thinks fixing problems is the same as making them worse. They will get worse and the valley’s residents have only themselves to blame. If UCSB wants to grow so be it. But at least make them pay for the 40 years of nothing they have done so far. For example, make them connect El Colegio Road to Ward on the east and Cathedral oaks on the West as a 4 lane arterial. Connect Phelps to mesa on the east and El Colegio on the west as a 3 to 4 lane arterial collector. Make them widen Storke, Los Carnaros, Fairview, Patterson and Turnpike roads to 4 lanes from campus to Cathedral Oaks. Make then widen Cathedral Oaks to 4 lanes from SR 192 to 101. Make them extend Turnpike as a 4 lane road west to connect with Ward Memorial and terminate at the airport terminal. This would create a quasi 1 square mile grid of 4 lane arterials through the valley and basically end the gridlock and massive amounts of air pollution generated by LOS C through F road ways and intersections. Now is the time to correct 40 years of the most ridiculous and insane planning policies ever contrived to damage an urban area promulgated by hysterical NIMBYism and fear of growth. Oddly enough many of the protesters and instigators of protest were UCSB students who moved on 30 years ago to screw up some other urban area with their nonsense, leaving long time valley residents with some of the worst growth related problems without any of the growth.
I trust this response to enrage those who honestly believe doing anything is bad, that the best path forward is to do nothing and bury head in sand. I will be called every name in the book from an “evil Orange County developer, to a planet wrecker. So be it. I stand firm on the last 40 years of unbelievable crap the other side has left us. I do not promote growth or development but I am getting real tired of being told that the way to stop it is to make things really crappy and accept that I will have to pay more, get less and sit in traffic all day. Well for crying out loud what did we stop the growth for if we still got all the same problems?