The highly contentious search for the best route to connect Santa Barbara cyclists from the Westside of the city to the Eastside took another step last Thursday when the city’s Transportation and Circulation Committee received an update from city planners on the route’s most viable options.
The committee is scheduled to pass on its recommendations to the Planning Commission on Thursday and to the City Council on June 14.
After the update and another well-attended round of public comment, the committee recommended immediately pursuing an option that would paint the iconic green bike-lane stripe on both sides of Micheltorena Street from San Andres Street on the Westside to Bath Street on the Eastside.
Twenty-five parking spaces on both sides of Micheltorena Street between Bath Street and Castillo Street would have to be removed. The roughly $50,000 “Option 7” alternative would be paid for by existing Measure A grants.
The committee also recommended going with one of a few related “Option 6” alternatives as a future replacement of the Micheltorena one.
One would add the green lanes on Micheltorena Street from San Andres Street to Castillo Street and down Castillo Street to Sola Street, where it would continue east to Santa Barbara High School as a bike boulevard, a low-motor-vehicle-traffic road that gives priority to bicycles as through traffic.
New traffic signals would be added along Sola Street, and 35 spaces along the east side of Castillo Street would be removed.
Another sub-option entails extending the eastbound Micheltorena Street green lane to Bath Street and adding another northbound green stripe on Bath Street between Sola Street and Micheltorena Street. Only 15 spaces would be removed on the north side of Micheltorena Street between Bath Street and Castillo Street.
The committee will leave the “Option 6” recommendation to the Planning Commission, which will hear a similar presentation to the one the committee heard. The sub-options would cost between $2 million and $2.5 million, and would be paid for through a competitive Active Transportation Program grant from the state.
The bicycle plan update also included other, arguably less contentious projects such as the Cota Street-Haley Street green lanes, the Chino Street bike boulevard, the Cabrillo Boulevard lanes and the Rancheria Street lanes.
Also presented to the committee were updates to the plan that would allow it to better comply with the state’s Streets and Highways Code, including maps of land use and bike parking, language addressing regional transportation plans, and information on community involvement.
One of the committee’s concerns was the timing of the grant application process. According to principal transportation planner Rob Dayton, the application window ends June 15, the day after the City Council is set to hear the Bicycle Master Plan recommendations.
“The challenge we are having is that when we designed the plan and the process, we designed it very neatly to fall in step with Cycle 3 of the Active Transportation Program,” Dayton told the committee. “Meaning that we have gone into a deeper dive into these projects, and with a more-needed community process, that timing is no longer lining up.”
He said that city staff were focusing on three grants that they had deemed most favorable for the options on the table and hoped the City Council would provide direction on what to pursue.
Because the projects are attractive in terms of grant favorability, he said the city could try to move forward with the applications without the specifics of a single chosen option for the east-west connection. Not having a concrete decision, however, would still hurt the city’s chances of winning a grant, he said. The next Active Transportation Program grant cycle would not be for another two years.
The update comes after an April 12 “Community Listening Workshop and Open House” where 11 options for the east-west connection were detailed to the community, which then broke up into groups to discuss the alternatives’ pros and cons.
The removal of parking spaces, especially near Micheltorena Street homes and businesses, has been a constant concern among the neighborhood’s residents and has dominated public comment sessions throughout the planning process.
The Transportation and Circulation Committee also recommended that further input from the Micheltorena Street neighborhood and the Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition be included in the decision-making process.
A massive turnout at a February City Council meeting generated five hours of discussion and debate that resulted in a 5-2 vote in favor of implementing the original Micheltorena Street option. Opposition to the decision was so fierce that the City Council decided to put the project on hold and send it to the Transportation and Circulation Committee and the Planning Commission.
— Noozhawk staff writer Sam Goldman can be reached at sgoldman@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.