Finally Moving on 101

Only seven miles of U.S. 101 lie within the Santa Barbara city limits, but it’s always seemed like more.

Drivers traveling north and south along the busy freeway know, with an inexorable sense of dread, that they will probably come to a standstill somewhere in Santa Barbara. And the city’s four stoplights on 101, the only official stops along the entire 435-mile expanse between Los Angeles and San Francisco, are no more popular with Santa Barbarans than with out-of-towners; anyone caught by the light on State Street while heading to or from the beach expects a wait of at least four minutes and turns off his engine, as posted signs advise.

But, now, construction is about to begin on a Caltrans project to eliminate the Santa Barbara bottleneck. After $3 million worth of studies and 34 years of haggling over whether to elevate or depress the freeway, Caltrans and the city of Santa Barbara reached a compromise that should satisfy freeway travelers, Santa Barbarans and the aesthetes in both camps.

The winning design, adopted after more than a hundred others were rejected, calls for a ground-level freeway, widened to six lanes from the present four, with undercrossings for two of Santa Barbara’s downtown streets. In a flourish typical of that town, one of the undercrossings will be dressed up with arches and ironwork to resemble a Spanish Renaissance bridge and to function as Santa Barbara’s official gateway. It all sounds a little too grand to us, but the compromise has many advantages. Besides eliminating the most infamous stoplights in the state, the plan will preserve the views of the beach from Santa Barbara’s hills as well as the giant Moreton Bay fig tree that grows along 101 and announces, better than any Spanish Renaissance bridge ever could, This is Santa Barbara.