October 21, 2005 - Ed in on Track

In case you missed the news, yesterday, the transportation authorities endorsed making Highway 101 three lanes wide from Milpas Street to the County line. They simultaneously agreed to add commuter trains between Camarillo and Goleta. It was compromise by committee, and everyone was happy. The car people got their lanes, and the alternative transportation people got their trains.

This deal making was done to give back to the commuters the 22.5 minutes of time they waste in traffic each weekday morning and night as they travel to and from Santa Barbara from cities in the South.

Of course, we know from experience that the $480 million dollar project will go over-budget. And we all know that two days after the projects are completed, traffic will be as bad as it was before. The only real effect of the project will be that the new capacity will enable more people to drive and train into Santa Barbara and Goleta each day. Our area will become more crowded. Residents who don’t like to living in crowded areas will move out. New residents, who don’t mind living in crowded areas, will replace them.

The new residents will be more tolerant of slow traffic. Consequently, they will make trips through traffic that the previous residents didn’t make. Traffic will become worse than before. More of the old residents will leave. One day Mel’s will close.

Well, this is Ed’s prediction. Who are we to argue? In the early eighties he predicted coffee shops on every corner and the ability to listen to any song ever recorded from anywhere in the world.

Yesterday, the dedicated staff of edhat.com was at the Amtrak station in Santa Barbara to take a first hand look at rail travel in our quiet little town in the days before freeway expansion. People waiting for the 9:21AM train to LA were mostly tourists. There were also a few men dressed in work clothes talking on their cell phones, a mom-and-kids group going to Oxnard to pick up a car, and a couple of college students starting their weekend early. The tourists had their cameras out, stepping onto the tracks to snap pictures of the train station - parting shots of quaint Santa Barbara.

When train stopped in the station, things started happening very fast. The dedicated staff had our clickers ready, but when the train stopped, and the crowd rushed on board, we found that we did not have enough of the entrances covered. Trains are long. From our vantage point at the front of the train, we had a difficult time counting the people getting on the last car. And, with passengers boarding so quickly, it was difficult to count them because we had less dedicated staffers than boarding points.

It took only a minute for most people to board. We did our best to count them all. The conductor waited for some stragglers. They were easy to count. Before we knew it, the train was leaving the station.

Our final tally of people boarding the train was 36. Lots of people guessed 35 and 37, but only one subscriber chose the perfect 36. It was a subscriber who goes by the name of Doc. Doc definitely knows what’s up. He/She wins an Edhat t-shirt.

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