The presentation was lengthy Monday evening and the information plenty as Goleta Community Services Director Steve Wagner brought both the Goleta City Council and Planning Commission up to speed on all of the city’s current and future transportation projects.

“This is really to facilitate a better understanding as a whole of the city’s transportation plan,” he told the agencies during his discussion on the transportation element of the city’s General Plan. The report outlined the many transportation needs, elements, concerns, plans and funding for road projects in the city.

Among the identified needs are more north-south crossings over Highway 101, which bisects the city, reconstruction of deteriorated freeway interchanges, and operational improvements for the improvement of traffic flow on Hollister Avenue in Old Town.

The report also outlined existing and future concerns for the state of circulation in Goleta, including the impacts of UCSB’s planned growth, and convenient and accessible transit alternatives for commuters — several thousand of which flow in and out of the city each day.

There are several projects in the pipeline with which the city has been involved, according to Wagner. Already near completion is the Cathedral Oaks interchange on the west side of the city, and the Ekwill/Fowler connection in Old Town. Future plans include an addition of a lane in each direction on Highway 101 west of Fairview Avenue, a capacity increase at the Storke Road/Hollister Avenue intersection that feeds into the freeway, as well as other capacity increases on Storke Road and Los Carneros Road, which stands to feel the increase in traffic as UCSB increases enrollment and the Cabrillo Business Park gains tenants.

Meanwhile, other projects are scheduled for completion in the next few years, including the Los Carneros freeway interchange and the Los Carneros/Calle Real intersection. Several other projects are in the very early stages but are far from completion, including the Hollister Avenue redesign, the Highway 101 overcrossing near Ellwood, and Hollister Avenue frontage improvements.

Funding for the myriad improvements to city streets come from multiple sources that have to be projected and pieced together as each project comes online, including city general funds, Redevelopment Agency funds, gas taxes, developer impact fees, Measure A, even mitigation and reimbursement “fair share” agreements like those related to UCSB’s projected impacts.

However, Wagner said, none of the projects or their funding is in any way set in stone.

“It’s subject to a lot of change — as funding comes on, things are going to change,” he said, adding that traffic studies are a moving target, based mostly on projections of human behavior under general circumstances. “I’d advise you to have a healthy mistrust (of traffic studies).”

Surveys are taken every few years to calibrate measurements of traffic and driving behavior.

— Noozhawk contributing writer Sonia Fernandez can be reached at sfernandez@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.