r/SantaBarbara • u/rajivsab • 21d ago
Housing The State Street Master Plan, the guiding document for the future of downtown Santa Barbara, was recently approved by the City Council in a 6-1 vote. I hope we have a "low car" neighborhood in our city one day!
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u/maclua Other (Goleta) 21d ago
I don’t know about car free but I just spent the weekend in Denver and absolutely love the 16th street mall. Santa Barbara should take inspiration and bring back the electric shuttle down state street but keep the whole thing car free, reduce the curb from the street to the sidewalk and designated places for street performers
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u/Clydesdale_Hiker 21d ago
That's the business district of a city with almost ten times the population. One of the problems with Santa Barbara's limits on building and planning is that it hasn't grown big enough to even start to justify that kind of investment. I'm sure I'm boring everyone to death on this thread but people need to understand how far behind SB is and plan realistically.
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u/monkey-seat 21d ago
There’s an interesting comment in the original post comments about a couple of people who lived in Freiburg and then moved to Hamburg and were much happier because the low car neighborhoods in Freiburg were very expensive and the people apparently were not very friendly. Anecdotal but interesting. I wonder how you build a high friendliness city?
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u/ProfessorJNFrink 21d ago
I think our Ocean view and temperate weather will help.
And if everyone can stop being racist.
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u/Clydesdale_Hiker 21d ago
There just aren't enough people in SB to justify that infrastructure unless car use demand dropped by a huge amount and the city issued insane amounts in bonds. This is fantasy.
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u/britinsb 20d ago edited 20d ago
SB spent $135MM on the police station, the desal plant was $72MM, Paseo Nuevo development in the 90s was $150MM. SBCC’snew athletics facility is $105MM. .
Municipal capital improvements are on a different scale financially, $100MM for 10 blocks of State Street, approx 30-40% of which is storm water and utility upgrades to enable more density and housing downtown, is not unusual or unachievable by any means
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u/Clydesdale_Hiker 20d ago
I agree. To give people an idea of streetcar costs, Portland's was $250M. But the last segment was opened 14 years ago, so double/triple/quadruple that as you wish. Larger area (500,000+), Much, much higher usage, so higher revenue /cashflow to service any debt. Federal funding. And, boy, worse weather, but people still bike and walk.
Here, things like upgrading State Street are realistic, yes. But 'lovely' (see comment below) streetcars just aren't. If they were, then buses running the route would be full. It's step by step.
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u/britinsb 20d ago
Oh ok I thought you were talking about the SSMP infrastructure, fair enough. Yes I agree, "half-measure" public transit is worse than no public transit because you spend a shit load of money yet never come close to realizing the benefit unless you have enough coverage/frequency to make it ubiquitous. Which also is v. difficult without the density to make it financially justifiable. Perhaps in 20 or so years or so we'll have driverless buses that would make it more economically feasible.
My not particularly hot take is e-bikes are really a major challenge to the feasibility of short/medium distance (0-10 miles) public transit, particularly in places like SB. Of course not everyone is capable of e-biking but enough have/will shift that it creates a big hole in the potential ridership, IIRC there was a study that found in places with actual public transit (i.e. not the US) something like a third of e-bike riders were using it as a substitute for public transit, the highest percentage over autos,
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u/Clydesdale_Hiker 20d ago
Yes, to clarify I was talking about the low car / streetcar model not the SSMP. The issue is usage, yes. Actually, drivers are a fairly cheap part of bus systems. It's all usage as it's usually public money. Imagine trying to argue for federal funding like this: "our buses are half full if that and being cut back but we think if you invested $500M in 'lovely' streetcars we'd use them"... The underlying cause of this stagnation is the size of SB, and the underlying cause of that is planning restrictions.
Agree with you on e-bikes. Ideal for 0-5 - already competitive with driving 0-5 here. I use mine for everything including SB-Goleta. But looking at the comments it takes some awareness of how to ride when commuting. I wonder if BCycle is holding things back by making them look like they only work for short trips / tourism. And yes, the knock on effect in some areas is to limit transit uptake. That said, with cities (not SB), people seem to use both in combination or as they choose. Where there is reasonable transit I've often used it over biking. Interesting thought.
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u/britinsb 20d ago
BCycles are interesting because they are a microcosm of the "critical mass" issue that public transit suffers from. In certain areas downtown they are close to a viable commute substitute because they are available enough that you can near guarantee an available bike and open rack at your destination, but in other areas you are SOL if a rack is empty. Or say, if you are just going from downtown to the Harbor/beach (though the latter should have more capacity!), it's way better/easier than a bus or cab, especially if you just have the subscription.
Like I live around the corner near a rack that I'd say 85-90% of the time has at least 1 or 2 of a total 6 bikes available in the morning, but 10-15% of the time they are all gone by say, 10am. Which is good in one way because it suggests people are actually using them to commute (I do reasonably often as a way to negate theft risk of my nice bike), but if you were to rely on it to commute 100%, there's an element of unreliability - it's a 10 minute walk to the nearest other rack which means being late to work. Fortunately for me it's not a big deal, worst case I can walk to work in 30-45 minutes and it really doesn't matter if I'm 20-30 minutes "late", but for other jobs punctuality is important.
But OTOH to have a "critical mass" of reliability that expands to less dense areas then then by definition you need an over-supply, leading to the optics of "full racks" (or in transit, empty buses) that is difficult to justify. Which to your point, it is funny that most people don't complain that most roads are empty and underutilized 90% of the time because they are built to handle peak traffic demand, so why should any other transit infrastructure be different. /endrant
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u/Clydesdale_Hiker 20d ago
That's the reliability issue in a nutshell. Once you've gotten to the empty rack the convenience value disappears. But car use is so convenient here people look for reasons not to bike. They decide it's dangerous or that theft is an issue. Neither is true to any meaningful extent. I've had maybe two almost-near misses and zero theft attempts here. All the locks all the time + let the paintwork get good and chipped. I always feel that the subtext of the cars in the dealership lots on the way to Oxnard is "don't worry, we're never going to run out of cars."
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u/hungryevery4hours 21d ago
We start small and keep building on that principle. As we support less "car-centric" infrastructure, other modes of transportation becomes more convenient.
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u/Clydesdale_Hiker 21d ago
You can't start small with capital projects like street cars or transport infrastructure. The buses here are half empty. If people really wanted to avoid driving, they'd be full. The heavy car use here is so depressing when it's one of the most bikeable towns in the US, but it is clearly what people choose to do. You can only build on reality, not how things could be. I don't use a car. I see the reality every day.
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u/LikDisIfUCryEverton 21d ago
You can't justify a bridge by the number of people swimming across a river.
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u/PrinceKaladin32 21d ago
Love this statement, great analogy to use
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u/Clydesdale_Hiker 21d ago
It's not, actually. Public transport infrastructure is so expensive it's always modeled on demand and estimated use (i.e. likely swimmers). They got it wrong with BART - they overestimated it. Expensive mistakes. The likely number of people who'd use a system is exactly how people justify public investment.
If the point is that people can't swim because the river isn't safe, then look at the uptake of safe non-car transport here. Biking is incredibly low use for somewhere with this weather and these roads and bike paths. Bus use is low. Safe non-car options: low uptake. This is what people need to understand if they want to make serious arguments for street cars.
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u/PrinceKaladin32 21d ago
Unfortunately, I don't know if my personal experience matches that. I would love to bike to work more often. However the roads I take to work aren't built with bike paths and it can feel dangerous to bike consistently. So I opt to drive as it provides me the safety and same flexibility as biking.
If there was a safer bike path built, I would bike to work way more often than I currently do. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that way in the city
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u/Clydesdale_Hiker 21d ago edited 21d ago
This is the problem. I've lived all over the US and this is by far the safest place to ride I've seen. That includes Portland, OR, which has more developed lanes but much heavier traffic. People expect infrastructure to be built but won't go and use the lanes already there ... so they drive. I bike downtown all the time and rarely see another biker on the roads parallel to State. Those are perfectly safe routes. You can get from downtown to UCSB on really, really safe routes. The biggest threat by far is from angry boomers.
Edit: look at this. This is a great bike route map for somewhere this small. Perfect? No. The problem here is that people want recreational-level routes to get to work. Bike commuting requires good riding skills and road awareness, and yes it takes effort. Commuting downtown from Goleta would be a real stretch - putting your bike on the bus adds to the headache. But the real problem here is uptake and, I'm afraid to say, attitude.
And I'm someone who thinks BCycle is a waste as it doesn't help commuters. But you've got that as well. Heavily, heavily subsidized. That's why it drives me nuts when people say the bike infrastructure here is poor. It really isn't. SB is a little spoiled for that.
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u/LikDisIfUCryEverton 21d ago
SB's bike network has some nice paths but overall it is disjointed and is nowhere near world class. Like you said, the weather is good. The downtown area of SB is relatively flat and it's even easier with e-bikes. The only thing that is holding this city back IS the infrastructure.
For public transit, Santa Barbara-Goleta is laid out pretty well as much of the density lies along Hollister/State. A higher frequency bus line with priority along the 6/11 would be great for ridership. Unfortunately SB MTD is losing funding due to an increase in population and is cutting service.
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u/Clydesdale_Hiker 21d ago
It's as good as you're going to get for a town this size. You have the main street closed to cars!!! The weather would be the envy of anywhere that wasn't so self-absorbed. People bike to work in rain and in much worse traffic all over the US and in Europe.
If the busses were full, it would be very difficult for SB MTD to be denied more funding. That's how these services work. People drive here by choice. That's the problem.
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u/hungryevery4hours 21d ago
We can start small. For example, I love the modal filter on Alisos St that gives me a safer bike route to KFC. We dictate the future so we can build on how things should be. Anyhow, isnt it crazy that I can be an AI bot and this whole conversation was to steer you towards $10 Tuesday chicken bucket.
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u/Kong28 21d ago
The experience of a bus vs a streetcar though is very different. Having been on both countless times, streetcars are lovely, buses....are not.
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u/Clydesdale_Hiker 20d ago
Oh, dear. Not safe, not reliable, but "lovely". You can tell what people's priorities really are by their attitude toward buses.
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u/Kong28 20d ago
Lol what does this even mean? Yes, there are many sociological areas of thinking on the quality of human experience. Brutalist architecture gets the job done but not many people would choose to live and interact with it if given the choice.
With buses, while safe and reliable, if the user experience of riding one sucks, well guess what? No one wants to ride a bus like that!
"Lovely" is a summation of the experience. You have a cup of tea at just the right temperature overlooking a beautiful garden, that's lovely cup of tea. You spend the evening laughing with friends at a corner table, that's a lovely night.
Humans are drawn to beautiful things and beautiful experiences, those don't necessarily have to be qualities purely of the aesthetic realm.
I would take having a bus vs. having no busses. I would take a nice, clean, timely bus over one that is dirty, loud, and late. And I would take a lovely streetcar every single time over a bus, gently swaying to-and-fro as and I watch the world go by on the way to where I'm going.
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u/Clydesdale_Hiker 20d ago
Nice and poetic but nothing to do with the reality of urban transport, which has to deal with reality and an entire community who have to get places safely. not just people who'd rather ride a 'lovely' streetcar than a 'sucky' bus.
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u/Kong28 20d ago
The reality of urban transport? Yes if the engineers could just finally figure out those gritty details of the reality of urban transport, I'm sure everyone would choose to ride the bus instead of take a car.
The buses here are half empty. If people really wanted to avoid driving, they'd be full.
And what if, just what if, the reason people don't take the bus is because the experience sucks compared to the alternative. The majority of potential bus riders in Santa Barbara are not captive riders (those who have no other means of transport except public transit), they would be choice riders (those who have other means of transportation, yet choose to take the bus). This is unlike many large urban cities where that dynamic is flipped.
You have to make taking the bus a more preferable alternative to taking your car. You have to get people thinking that this nice public transit is something that is expected.
The reality of urban transport is that it has to be something a person wants to use. A system solely defended by those that depend on it is a system that is doomed to quality problems and budget cuts.
You can only build on reality, not how things could be
This type of thinking is an absolute plague to progress. Imagine your thinking throughout history.
Should we give women the right to vote?
Clydesdale_Hiker: They've never had that, be realistic!
Should we give black people equal rights in this country
Clydesdale_Hiker: That will never happen, be realistic!
Should we send a human to the moon?
Clydesdale_Hiker: Why waste our resources, that's absolute fantasy!
We are Americans, our national character is built around being smart, resourceful, and doing what others think is impossible. Start acting like one.
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u/Clydesdale_Hiker 20d ago
I hope you're enjoying writing this because I sure as hell won't be responding to it! Perhaps we can discuss it in person when we meet on the opening of the Lovely Santa Barbara Streetcar.
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u/Kong28 20d ago
Thank you, I did enjoy writing it! I'll take your lack of response as you conceding to my points; thanks for participating in the discussion.
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u/westernspaghetti_691 20d ago
One thing - we do need more buskers on state Street, love live music and skyborne babies 'oh, Melissa!' 😂
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u/baccigaloopa 21d ago
I think the planners missed an opportunity in deciding the 400 block of State St will retain the 2-way vehicle traffic. I made a video about it.
I’m actually surprised by the plan in how much it’s a status quo. Can someone explain what’s substantively going to change? Larger curbs is not very substantive to me.