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In a great year-end victory for common sense and for Santa Barbara’s architectural heritage, the city’s Architectural Board of Review (ABR) at its Monday, December 18th meeting rejected a plan by the Transportation Division of Public Works to build so-called “mini-roundabouts” at three intersections (Alta Vista & Sola, Alta Vista & Victoria, and Olive & Sola). These road obstructions were the most egregiously bad part of so-called “traffic calming” plans for the St. Francis neighborhood and for the area around Santa Barbara High School. The plans also include numerous curb bulbouts, to which the ABR gave conditional approval.
The “traffic calming” plan has a long and checkered history. Transportation staff first presented it to the public in March, 2003. This was followed by an expensive, year-long publicity campaign to convince residents of the desirability of “traffic calming,” with the stated requirement of getting at least 65% of homeowners to endorse the plan before moving forward. That goal was never achieved; after canvassing the neighborhood three times, less than 30% of homeowners signed on. Nevertheless the Transportation division pushed ahead, and has since proclaimed at every opportunity that the project was driven solely by the desires of the neighborhood. (The official, rather Orwellian name of the St. Francis neighborhood project is the Neighbors for Livable Streets Program.)
Temporary mockups of the road obstructions, consisting of traffic cones and sawhorses (later supplemented with asphalt berms), were installed beginning in 2004. According to Transportation staff, the goal was to gain experience before building permanent versions. Though the City has not shared the exact numbers, apparently more than a thousand phone calls of complaint were received just in the first month. Regardless of public sentiment, at a contentious City Council hearing on April 11, 2006, the council voted unanimously in favor of making the obstructions permanent.
As usual, the Transportation division hired an outside engineering firm, in this case Penfield & Smith, to do the design. A preliminary plan was first presented to the ABR on July 10, 2006. From the beginning, the citizen volunteers of the ABR, most of them design professionals, were faced with a difficult dilemma. City Council had mandated that this project go forward, and Transportation staff were insistent. But the ABR is responsible for making sure that new construction in Santa Barbara fits esthetically with the city’s architectural heritage, and the so-called “mini-roundabouts” proved to be inherently esthetically challenged. The problem was that Santa Barbara’s traditional small, square intersections could not be made round simply by placing a round obstruction in the middle of the street. Thus a small forest of yield signs, roundabout signs, and painted arrows in the street were required in hopes of convincing motorists that squares were indeed circular. But the proliferation of signs blocked visibility in the intersections.
The ABR sent the plans back for revision twice with numerous suggestions. Monday, 18 December 2006, was to have been the final review. At this meeting there were strong presentations by two members of the Pearl Chase Society, whose board opposes the “traffic calming” projects as an architectural travesty, as well as by three members of Santa Barbara Safe Streets (sbsafestreets.org), outlining both the practical and the esthetic problems of road obstructions. As the discussion went on, three of the six board members present that day stated serious misgivings at being pressured into approving an amateurish and potentially dangerous modification to Santa Barbara’s historic streetscape. When a motion to approve the project was made, three board members abstained, preventing passage. Finally, in a move that no doubt startled the Transportation staff—who are used to compliant committees—a new motion was crafted that left the roundabouts out entirely. This motion passed unanimously.
The ABR deserves praise both for giving this project long and careful consideration, and for refusing to compromise their standards by giving in to the latest fad in urban planning. In so doing, they fulfilled their charge of preserving and enhancing Santa Barbara’s architectural beauty, and they have also spared us—at least for now—not just inconvenience and ugly vistas, but potential dangers. Public Works is of course unhappy about this decision, and is already planning to present a revised, slightly more palatable version of mini-roundabouts at a future ABR meeting. And on Tuesday, January 2nd, at the first ABR meeting of the new year, Planning Department staff, working hand-in-hand with the Transportation division, ordered the ABR to back down from the decision it had had every legal right to make. Ultimately only City Council—supported by calls and e-mails from concerned citizens—can stop this misbegotten project. We hope that council members will have the wisdom to listen not to a small group of ideologues at Public Works, but to their ABR, to historic preservationists, and to the vast majority of Santa Barbarans, who have said no to ugly traffic obstacles, circles, and signs.
(This article originally appeared in the opinion secton of the Santa Barbara News-Press on Sunday, January 7, 2007, and is reprinted with permission.)
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