3 ms·

Santa Barbara is kind of an interesting informal case study. It's hemmed in by steep hills and the Pacific ocean and a lot of the available area has already be

Santa Barbara is kind of an interesting informal case study. It's hemmed in by steep hills and the Pacific ocean and a lot of the available area has already been developed. https://www.google.com/maps/@34.4127513,-119.7096148,12z/data=!5m1!1e4 https://www.google.com/maps/@34.4127513,-119.7096148,12z/dat... On the other hand, despite great zoning in the core parts of Santa Barbara that outlaws the typical strip mall construction pattern, leaving a relatively dense-feeling downtown, it's extremely car centric. There's noticeable traffic both on the 101 and downtown, especially on weekends. Spending time in Santa Barbara, you can't help but feel that a) there isn't a lot more room to spread out for more development, but b) there is definitely a lot more "room" for Santa Barbara to improve in terms of sustainably improving density. Santa Barbara makes a lot of concessions to cars, which is not going to scale at all if the population grows. If you take car dependence as a given, Santa Barbara probably cannot afford to grow much more. On the other hand, Santa Barbara is famed for its nearly perfect weather year-round. Good weather and and its small size means that almost all trips within Santa Barbara proper can be made easily via E-bike, if only there were more bike lanes, but there are too many 2 lane roads with cars that move too quickly driven by drivers who are not used to sharing the road. But I suspect that Santa Barbara may be too dependent on famously car-centric Los Angeles to ever consider de-prioritizing cars.. It's all moot point, though, because I think most people who actually own homes in Santa Barbara are older and quite wealthy and do not really care too much about abstract things like "sustainable growth" and would quite prefer if Santa Barbara could just stay "the same" for the next 20 years until they die.

stevesearer 4y ago
State Street was closed to cars during pandemic and it appears that is going to be permanent. The city also has an e-bike program that I can informally say is used quite heavily. In addition many youths ride e-bikes and I will be interested to see if that reduces car dependence for that generation. Water availability is an important factor limiting growth (though we do have a desal plant). Wildfires are another problem to pay attention to.
- _vertigo 4y ago
  After a couple of years away, I returned last week. Yes, the e-bike program looks quite promising. Closed State Street is a no-brainer, although I've heard a lot of NIMBY-types are opposing it for some reason. But, after living in San Francisco for a couple of years and becoming used to riding my bike everywhere, I had a realization that while on paper Santa Barbara should be much more inviting than SF for bikes, in practice it's weirdly almost less inviting because drivers do not seem interested in sharing the road at all and there are very, very few bike lanes. Most of the main one-way "through streets" that run north-south in Santa Barbara like De La Vina, Santa Barbara, Anacapa, etc. are decidedly bike hostile because people drive very fast on them and there is no bike lane. One way to solve this is to make State St, Bath St, and Garden St dedicated north-south bike thoroughfares, and give all of the east-west streets that cross State St. bike lanes. Biking through Santa Barbara would then be a matter of biking north or south on a dedicated, safe thoroughfare before turning off east or west until you arrive where you need. As it stands, not really very inviting to bike in, _especially_ if you don't know the city by heart..
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    State Street as a pedestrian mall is interesting in light of Sacramento's K-Street Mall re-opening to auto traffic (2011) and Fresno's Fulton St. (2016). https://archive.ph/20130221230638/http://www.news10.net/news/local/article/162478/2/Businesses-shoppers-celebrate-cars-returning-to-K-Street https://archive.ph/20130221230638/http://www.news10.net/news... https://cal.streetsblog.org/2016/06/07/fresno-pedestrian-mall-is-no-more/ https://cal.streetsblog.org/2016/06/07/fresno-pedestrian-mal...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
rconti 4y ago
And regardless of what Santa Barbara itself does, it'll still have a major state highway running through the middle of it.

stevesearer 4y ago

State Street was closed to cars during pandemic and it appears that is going to be permanent. The city also has an e-bike program that I can informally say is used quite heavily. In addition many youths ride e-bikes and I will be interested to see if that reduces car dependence for that generation. Water availability is an important factor limiting growth (though we do have a desal plant). Wildfires are another problem to pay attention to.

_vertigo 4y ago
After a couple of years away, I returned last week. Yes, the e-bike program looks quite promising. Closed State Street is a no-brainer, although I've heard a lot of NIMBY-types are opposing it for some reason. But, after living in San Francisco for a couple of years and becoming used to riding my bike everywhere, I had a realization that while on paper Santa Barbara should be much more inviting than SF for bikes, in practice it's weirdly almost less inviting because drivers do not seem interested in sharing the road at all and there are very, very few bike lanes. Most of the main one-way "through streets" that run north-south in Santa Barbara like De La Vina, Santa Barbara, Anacapa, etc. are decidedly bike hostile because people drive very fast on them and there is no bike lane. One way to solve this is to make State St, Bath St, and Garden St dedicated north-south bike thoroughfares, and give all of the east-west streets that cross State St. bike lanes. Biking through Santa Barbara would then be a matter of biking north or south on a dedicated, safe thoroughfare before turning off east or west until you arrive where you need. As it stands, not really very inviting to bike in, _especially_ if you don't know the city by heart..
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  State Street as a pedestrian mall is interesting in light of Sacramento's K-Street Mall re-opening to auto traffic (2011) and Fresno's Fulton St. (2016). https://archive.ph/20130221230638/http://www.news10.net/news/local/article/162478/2/Businesses-shoppers-celebrate-cars-returning-to-K-Street https://archive.ph/20130221230638/http://www.news10.net/news... https://cal.streetsblog.org/2016/06/07/fresno-pedestrian-mall-is-no-more/ https://cal.streetsblog.org/2016/06/07/fresno-pedestrian-mal...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

rconti 4y ago

And regardless of what Santa Barbara itself does, it'll still have a major state highway running through the middle of it.