Paul Wellman

Councilmembers and mayoral candidates Helene Schneider and Iya Falcone engaged in a Zen showdown over the proposal to make the intersection at De la Vina and State streets safer. After a four-hour meeting, the council punted and the item was tabled.

CONGESTION INDIGESTION: Next time the Santa Barbara Council sets out to do absolutely nothing, maybe they could not spend four hours and 15 minutes not doing it. I’m sure there were other things I myself could have not done in that time, like not alphabetizing my CD collection.

But for more than four hours, our mayor and councilmembers dithered over the fate of the intersection of State Street and De la Vina — which clearly needs serious help — before executing the ultimate political dodge. (To be fair, they can’t be blamed for how long the proceedings went, only for the lack of resolution. The council chambers were packed and no less than 57 people signed up to speak for — or against — the proposal. More astonishingly, they all stayed to the bitter end.) In the realm of government non-action, there are many ways to do nothing. If you wish to appear like you mean business, but just can’t decide, you “refer” the matter at hand back to some committee. If you care less about looking resolute and just want the thing to go away, you ask staff to come up with another report, presumably at some much later date when you’ll be on an important fact-finding trip in Cancun. But if you lack the wherewithal to muster even a passable pose, you just “table” the thing. That’s the political equivalent of “Later, dude.” As in “don’t hold your breath” later.

What made Tuesday night’s torpor-fest all the more galling is that by the end, the councilmembers had actually stumbled onto a good solution. Most critically, they figured out how to eliminate the key friction point pitting cars and trucks against bicycles and pedestrians. The plan may not have been perfect, but it was 98 percent there. In my book, that’s plenty good enough for government work. On any other night, the measure probably would have passed by at least a 4-3 vote. But we are now in the throes of a do-or-die mayoral showdown pitting Councilmember Iya Falcone against Councilmember Helene Schneider. Given the dynamics of that race, it was all but guaranteed nothing of substance would occur.

On the table was a fairly routine public works project that would reconfigure how State Street now pours into the top of De la Vina Street. For pedestrians, the crosswalk would be shortened from its current 190 feet to 50. The shallow, un-signaled right-hand curve that forms a Y with State Street would be eliminated. In its place, a standard T intersection would be built, forcing drivers to at least reduce their speed a bit before shooting down De la Vina. Although no pedestrians or cyclists have been maimed, mutilated, or killed at that intersection in the last 42 years, city traffic engineers claim it poses a substantial risk. With the arrival of Trader Joe’s and the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, that area has morphed into a much livelier, “pedestrian rich” neighborhood. But these businesses bring with them increased traffic volumes, too, and given the speeds at which we drive, the area has become an accident waiting to happen. One speaker in support of the proposed intersection changes noted that in 15 minutes, he witnessed five people run the red light at State and De La Vina, one driver make an illegal left-hand turn, 60 cars driving in part or all of the bike lane, and many driving too fast.

Cyclists now hoping to ride past the intersection and continue down State Street find themselves terrorized by the prospect that speeding motorists, who now launch themselves into the free right-hand turn lane as if it’s a freeway on-ramp — which it very much resembles — will crash into them. Even many hard-core macho cyclists have learned simply to avoid this intersection.

To contradict Sigmund Freud, sometimes a cigar is not just a cigar, and in Santa Barbara, a public works project is never what it seems. In recent years, City Hall has made it official policy to make our streets more inviting to bicycles and pedestrians. To groups like Cars Are Basic and Santa Barbara SAFE (Safe. Aesthetic. Fair. Efficient.) Streets — people who will embrace the autocracy of the automobile with their last dying breath — this is social engineering and borders on mind control. They’ve become convinced that City Hall is intent on making it more difficult for people to drive, thereby forcing them to ride bikes, walk, or even get on a bus. Less paranoid members of this tribe merely dismiss efforts to make room for bikes and walkers as impractical, utopian, expensive, and just plain silly.

In recent years, this group has grown more potent, feeding upon the many missteps of a Public Works Department never noted for political dexterity. Car-rights activist Michael Self is a born-again hell-raiser, and likely candidate in this fall’s City Council race. She showed up with a petition signed by 560 people — and letters from 25 others — saying the intersection change was a bad idea. It would cause congestion and long lines at the light, eat up existing on-street parking, and chase frustrated motorists into the adjoining neighborhoods looking for shortcuts. (A city traffic engineer countered that the new intersection would add only “three to four seconds” to a person’s trip.) Many argued the intersection was perfectly safe. And if it was so scary for pedestrians, they wondered, why hasn’t City Hall re-striped the pedestrian crosswalks with big glow-in-the-dark stripes?

On the other side, there is the Bicycle Coalition, COAST (Coalition for Sustainable Transportation), SBCAN (Santa Barbara County Action Network), and a host of other “new urbanist” acronyms who tend to regard the car as the single most polluting, alienating, and destructive invention known to humanity. They contended that the project would help reduce the automobile’s primacy, encourage cycling, reduce childhood obesity, and help in the fight against urban sprawl and global warming. Many cyclists also spoke, proudly sporting electrified fronds of spectacular helmet hair. One had his jaw wired shut after being recently hit by a truck near, though not at, the intersection in question.

The animating force dictating the evening’s outcome was the political jockeying between mayoral hopefuls Falcone and Schneider. Falcone had staked out her position well before the meeting. She was against the project, pure and simple. In these perilous economic times, she maintained, the funding was uncertain and the community was simply too polarized to proceed. Her position was consistent with her opposition to the mini-roundabouts and other “traffic calming devices” that are rallying icons for the car-rights crowd. For Schneider, the dance was more dicey. A new urbanist at heart with strong backing from the alt-transit set — she actually rides the bus with considerable regularity — Schneider did not want to become the bête noire of the Kar Krazies come election day next fall. Her strategy was to delay the De la Vina proposal by declaring it “uncooked,” while leading the charge to install new stoplights at De la Vina and Figueroa streets — where a 67-year-old pedestrian was recently killed by a MTD bus — and three blocks down the street at Canon Perdido.

Both scored points. Procedurally, Schneider proved quicker and more adroit. She was the first out of the blocks to declare her unhappiness with the lack of community consensus, and to suggest that new stoplights at Figueroa should take priority. As a sop to her more hardcore alt-transit supporters — who regarded anything but total victory as a political sell-out — she suggested inserting a bike lane where the right hand curve is now. But Falcone proved more steadfast and determined. While she embraced Schneider’s suggestion, she wanted the matter tabled, the political equivalent of consigning it to limbo. When other councilmembers suggested sending it to one committee or another, Falcone refused to budge. She wanted it tabled. And by the time 10 o’clock rolled around, no one had energy to argue.

For a brief instant, it appeared Councilmember Das Williams — a seriously practical guy underneath all that flamboyant idealism — might snatch action from the jaws of delay. He figured out that adding a green right-hand turn arrow to the stop light at the proposed new intersection would let most cars continue down De la Vina Street virtually unimpeded, though they would have to slow somewhat to execute the new right turn. If, however, cyclists or pedestrians were nearby, automated street sensors would turn the green arrow to red to allow safe passage. The technology exists. Wiring for the green arrow, it turns out, was included in the city’s current plans, but the green arrow, somehow, was not.

Mayor Marty Blum and Councilmember Grant House were with him. Yet Councilmember Roger Horton fretted about the finances, exaggerating by 100 percent how much City Hall would have to put up in order to match the state grant, and Councilmember Dale Francisco, the automobile’s best friend in City Hall, has been reviling this project since his council campaign. Had Schneider not been deploying her defensive campaign moves, I’d bet a thousand donuts she’d have provided the fourth vote. But her strategic objective was to allow no sunlight to shine between her position and that of Falcone. Given how late into the night the meeting went, I’d say there was little risk of sunlight intruding anywhere.

In the meantime, there are only 264 shopping days between now and the mayoral election, when three council seats are also up for grabs, meaning it could be a whole new ball game. In the meantime, as I ride my bike, I’ll be steering clear of State and De la Vina.

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