Over the last year and a half, the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments (SBCAG) has led a study aimed at identifying traffic and safety improvements along the three highways that form a triangle around the Santa Ynez Valley.
SBCAG, and officials from other jurisdictions involved with the study, held a public workshop on May 19 to present the findings of this Santa Ynez Valley Traffic Circulation and Safety Study. The Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians co-sponsored the study, and the cities of Solvang and Buellton were also involved.
The study identifies 19 different areas along highways 101, 154, and 246 where improvements are recommended, as well as ways to make these improvements. During the workshop, 3rd District County Supervisor Joan Hartmann said the officials involved with this effort took a broad look at the valley’s traffic problems.
“Instead of just looking intersection by intersection, we wanted to look regionally,” Hartmann said.
SBCAG Planning Director Michael Becker, who presented the findings alongside a consultant the agency hired for the project, said that regional transportation planning efforts usually focus on easing vehicle congestion and speeding up traffic. However, this project was the opposite.
“With one exception—we do recognize that automobility through Solvang does suffer from pedestrian traffic and other issues—we largely heard that elsewhere in the valley, we need to slow down traffic,” Becker said.
He cited specific spots in the valley, where people are fearful of trying to cross a highway on bike or on foot because the traffic is free flowing, such as at Grand Avenue and Highway 154 in Los Olivos. To learn more about these trouble spots, SBCAG and other local leaders took a bus tour of the highways with some residents in February 2019 and then held a community meeting in September 2019 to hear additional input from residents.
Through this study, the consultants SBCAG hired identified 19 locations throughout the valley where improvements are recommended. The consultants also provided a list of possible solutions, as well as cost estimates for these projects. These include big-ticket items in the millions of dollars, such as the construction of roundabouts or new bike and pedestrian paths, as well as some cheaper options like creating all-way stops or making changes to pedestrian crosswalks.
If any of these projects were to move forward, the California Department of Transportation would first have to approve the plans as the state agency owns and maintains all three of the highways. However, Becker said that SBCAG could work with the state agency to demonstrate why these improvements are necessary.
Becker said the plan, which can be viewed on SBCAG’s website, has to go before two agency committees before going to the policy board in late June.
This article appears in May 28 – Jun 4, 2020.