Destruction of Santa Barbara’s Main Thoroughfare Continues Apace
By Scott Wenz
They said, “We have a better idea.”
They failed.
They said, “We will keep California Golden.
They failed.
Cars Are Basic, Inc. warned the “other side” that failure would be their only outcome.
Multiple City of Santa Barbara Council meetings, even more Traffic Circulation Meetings, public outreach, and of course the Dog and Pony Shows at Palm Park, were attend by CAB.
We warned the losers they were spiraling down into destruction.
Have you seen the proposed seven-story Paseo Nuevo Project?
Have you tried to travel the idiotic street changes in downtown Santa Barbara?
For those of you on the “other side” that laughed, derided, and far too often lied about facts: Are you happy?
CAB warned you repeatedly that the high rise “canyon” effect would permanently change the micro-climate of downtown Santa Barbara.
Government trolls such as Hart, Williams, Gerth, Dayton, Van Hengle, Mayors Blum, Schneider, Murillo, and the Castle-In-The-Sky groups called variously the Community Environmental Council, Bike Coalition (MOVE), Citizens for Sustainable Transportation, and others, have made it clear: open streets, efficient shopping routes, and badly needed emergency street planning were not what they wanted.
Quietly, these losers and their latest named operations now hide from the public because of their failures.
You listened to the likes of the Environmentalist Schools at UCSB, CSUCL, CALPOLY. Did their projected outcomes of 30 years ago happen?
You backed and voted for Measure E in Santa Barbara and then turned around and let them deceive you.
CAB last year had a former Dean from UCSB show at our monthly meeting (yes he was welcomed). At the end of the meeting, his parting statement was “I don’t agree with anything you stand for in transportation.”
Really?
Where is his record of success?
Old Town Goleta?
What are you now faced with?
After decades of crushing the Downtown Traffic Grid of Santa Barbara, Paseo Nuevo is a joke, the rest of State St. is worse.
Old Town Goleta was destroyed in less than four months of narrowing a great working street.
What happened?
Simple: centers of radical urban planning that have repeatedly failed east of the Mississippi found a home at the UC & CSU systems, where uninformed and childish students beat the drum.
You and your predecessors followed reckless and dangerous policies for 40 years (did we mention visionless Vision Zero?).
At each turn, your failures were excused by “We just need to do a little more.”
The lack of understanding, piled failure-on-failure, until the mountain was too large to ignore, and you excused them with what?
With the aforementioned lack of understanding.
There was a former Executive Editor for the News-Press who after six years, called it quit. In conversation with CAB, he said his intentional five years of blocking of CAB letters and positions was because he thought we were crazy.
Why?
Because the City of Santa Barbara had contacted him and told him we were simply troublemakers and to block us from the paper. His last year at the News-Press changed; he backed our positions. It took him half a decade but give him credit: he knew he had been lied to.
The Losers continue their spiraling decent into destruction.
Are you going follow them down that black hole?
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No, we are not going down that hole, nor are we going to endure this incompetent insanity any longer. We never thought a planned community would be appealing, too generic or conforming, but that’s where we are going. Watching our beloved city self destruct in the last decade is more than we can bear. We lost shopping, eating, and strolling around downtown. Driving has become an obstacle course with no rational reasoning. Parking is prohibited, penalized, or nonexistent to venture downtown so we just don’t go, and don’t ask us to dress up to enjoy dinner and a show at the Granada on our bicycles 😡Utopia is a pipe dream always one more failed experiment away. So we are moving, and will not miss the urine stench, overgrown weeds, dead trees and city area landscaping ( to save water?) Bums sleeping on the streets (protected like endangered species) crime and gang tags, with no policing presence. So farewell, and thanks for the memories of a wonderful city that was.
Gary & Linda Smythe
“Old Town Goleta was destroyed in less than four months of narrowing a great working street.
What happened?”
Follow the money 💰 it’s always the money. Every city council for the last 30-40 years has been taking on debt offered by the state to build capital improvement projects (CIP’s) that far exceed the tax revenues generated and collected by an aging and declining retirement population.
No investments in our young people born and raised here.
When the bill comes due, another grant is taken from the state robbing Peter to pay Paul.
That’s how the Goleta restripe boondoggle happened. That’s how a $25M train station is being built to service less than 100 people in a town of barely 30,000…that’s how $50M bike paths are built to service a small community average age over 60….
Thanks for the article and fighting the good fight. As long as the current political leadership can brainwash the community into thinking it’s a Democrat vs Republican fight instead of a “hey this is our town and we like our town the way it is”…this will continue until this entire area is unrecognizable soulless homogeneous urban scape indistinguishable from all the others