Edhat Reader
By Ronald Hays, Santa Barbara
The ongoing construction on the streets of Santa Barbara seems to be incessant, often frustrating and certainly unreasonably invasive. One cannot drive on any major Santa Barbara roadway for any distance without encountering delays, re-routes and so many Notice Of Construction signs that it seems to be some kind of flag parade. Yet, our street surfaces are absolutely a disaster, with little of the work being done to correct this unacceptable level of maintenance, particularly on heavily traveled thoroughfares.
How in the world can city officials justify spending mega millions of our hard earned, taxpayer dollars on barely used (if ever) handicapped curbs, tire and suspension destroying bulb outs, roundabouts and massive center of the street STOP sign barriers?
I am all for helping the handicapped and promoting safety; but eeegads, at some point in even the tiniest bit of common sense, the ends must justify the means ($). This is just pure, unadulterated, irresponsible, beauracracy at its worst. Can’t somebody in City Hall get out of “lock step” in the system and say “whoa, this doesn’t pass the test for the sensible use of financial resources”?
Is it possible to identify the City employee most responsible for this egregious failure to carefully manage our precious resources? Somewhere in this “blind leading the blind” process of determining where to direct resources from our already way-over budget indebtedness is a bureaucrat pushing through this misguided and logic defying program.
We deserve to know who is responsible and the Mayor and City Council need to use the authority that we the voters and taxpayers granted them, to put this ship back on course.
As I frequently say, “I will never understand why it is called common sense when it is so uncommon.”
I hear your frustration but let me break down the construction projects a bit. There are indeed many but not all are city public works. First up: Frontier and Cox fiber optics cable installations. Required ripping up streets for under-grounding and stringing thick cables, extra spools of cable and splice tubes on poles everywhere. AT&T and Verizon are working on their cell service, adding connection boxes and antennas on poles everywhere. Ugly, but no one seems to care about the eyesores gradually making SB look like a third-world country. But wait! There’s more.
The City received funding to repair water line and sewer infrastructure. Hadn’t been done in 50 years and surely it is time. You really don’t want geysers in the street or sewerage not in pipes. Some credit is due the city for coordinating some of the above projects but the overlap was not extensive. But wait! There’s more.
The Pedestrian and Bicycle Master Plans got funded for numerous roadway safety improvements. That’s a good thing, right? Bulb-outs, speed hums, crosswalks and flashing crosswalk signals included. These projects are on-going will actually become more numerous over the next three years.
Drivers, it seems, cannot drive responsibly and we have essentially zero traffic enforcement by the SBPD, and so the City installs traffic calming devices to force people to slow down. If you actually do that, you don’t have to worry about your tires and suspension.
And then there’s repaving. The City cheaped out and used patching and slurry sealing for decades and that’s failed and so more intensive and appropriate roadway repairs are necessary. Many neighborhood streets are actually dangerous. So this gets done as funding becomes available, which may not be in sync with all the other projects already mentioned and some I’ve probably left out.
This is indeed what upgrading our infrastructure looks like! Just bear with it for a couple of years because it probably wont be happening again for many decades to come. Except for the ugly arm-think black cables hanging everywhere thanks to Frontier, Cox, Verizon and AT&T, the rest of the City conceived and planned infrastructure projects are surely a good thing and are going to be great when done!
“I am all for helping the handicapped and promoting safety; but” not if it costs money or is inconvenient.
Yeah, we have a lot of construction out in Goleta as well. I welcome it absolutely. Making our streets safer and more accessible to children and those with disabilities is a win-win for our society.
This is what upgrading our infrastructure looks like. Isn’t that a good thing? I think so.
“…tire and suspension destroying bulb outs…” You are supposed to drive around the bulb outs, not over them. But it’s true that some are poorly marked and hard to see, and people should complain to the city about those.
I’m concerned that there has been a huge investment in bike routes, but there is no signage telling bicyclists to use them. People still bike along Micheltorena while most of Sola, one block down, has been blocked in several places to restrict cars and make it safe and easy for bikes. If we don’t require bikes to use the dedicated routes when possible, it will have been a waste of money.
Sadly, we cannot do that – state law says that bikes are as entitled to use public streets as cars, and it seems that most serious cyclists prefer to use the street. The shiny new “multi-use” paths are rarely used, except by joggers and dog-walkers.
It’s not just downtown, that’s for sure. There are dozens of ongoing and seemingly never-ending road/bridge projects happening throughout the south coast. Everywhere you drive there’s a construction Zoe that’s been there for weeks or months. Sure, infrastructure needs to be improved periodically. But why do these projects never seem to end? If you travel around the US at all you can see these things getting done in a fraction of the time it takes for the likes of City, County, and Caltrans to complete a project. It seems like they start a bunch of things at once, SLOWLY work on them, and it takes that much longer to get a single one completed. Meanwhile the signs and traffic restrictions remain in effect, whether anyone’s working or not that day, or that week eve. Maybe they don’t have the brightest folks in charge, or maybe the dollars for these projects balloon up the longer they take. Maybe there’s not a big incentive to get things done efficiently. Not sure. Never in my life living around SB have I seen this much road work ongoing and taking so long to get completed. It’s weird.
BASIC – it’s not “weird” at all, it’s called upgrading our infrastructure.You’d think that’s something most people would actually agree on as being a good thing, despite their politics. But no, not you.
No worries dude, you disagree with my points – or maybe never even tried to understand them. I stated my opinion. Nothing political at all.
Talk about not understanding points lol! I never said it was political. In fact, quite the opposite. It’s the one thing most people agree on: improving infrastructure.
Your don’t really have a “point” either. Just complaining about it. So is that your opinion? That the construction shouldnt be done?
He FEELS like these projects take longer than they should.
You know, like a real doctor biologist, he relies on his FEEELINGS.
So many words. In the time it took you to write that you probably could have figured out if your premise has any basis in reality, i.e., that things take longer here than elsewhere.
Nah. You just go with your fEEliNGs
Ever been to Portland OR and its environs?!
Every city and state in the nation probably makes the same complaints! Seems it’s human nature.
Thank you for this! I live in town and have been stunned at how much street work is on-going. It would have made — it would make — in public acceptance if the city sent regular, weekly posts to EDHAT, for instance, but, especially EDHAT about where and what they were planning to do that week – and why. I really doubt it is to upgrade for children and the disabled.
Surely, they know a week ahead of time where the crews will be located?! Carrillo Street downtown, for instance, has been a mess for weeks! Other streets cut to one lane. For a city that moans about its deficit, structural and actual, all this money must be coming from somewhere? for what? for how long? and out of whose pockets?
I think a lot of it came through a few years back when we “scored” massive amounts of infrastructure spending due to COVID (COVID Relief Funding). The legacy of COVID continues….
I’m pretty sure they’re calling those “Curb extensions” and not “Bulb outs” for a rather specific reason?
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A rose (or a skunk cabbage) by any other name is….
Pathetic ignorant intellectually dishonest whining.
That’s just you Gorfman. Others are expressing our honest opinions about what we’re observing in our town as we drive around and experience something we’ve noticed being a real problem, and looking for things to be better.