Goleta must be a model of safety and accessibility

Voice from Goleta / Robert Bernstein

3/14/02

In early February, I was hit by a car on my way home from work, bicycling the same route I do every day, trying to avoid the motorized violence of the Goleta big box center.

Several years ago the center was dropped into the neighborhood where I have lived for almost 20 years near Storke Road and Hollister Avenue. All roadway designs were focused on moving the maximum volume of motor vehicles in and out. There was no regard for the impact on non-motorized life in the area.

Where students used to bike and walk on Storke Road headed to Dos Pueblos High School, the road is sterile now in the mornings.

Sitting here in the Rehabilitation Institute I have been told that my only job is to get well and to forget about other demands from the outside world. I told the doctor that I can accept that when it comes to my science and engineering job. But when it comes to community planning issues it is not so easy.

As I work on my physical rehabilitation here plans are in the works to destroy another area of Goleta. It will make it more likely that I and other people who responsibly refrain from driving will end up right back in the Rehab Institute, or worse.

I refer to the current plans for Old Town Goleta and Highway 217. Back in October 1995 Goleta started a visioning process for Old Town Goleta that was truly visionary. After two years of meetings Goletans had plans for Old Town as an area that would invite people to come in and explore on foot, on bicycle and by transit. Wider sidewalks, bike lanes and street plantings would complement a central plaza, a movie theater and other enhancements for positive activities for all to enjoy.

Over the years, that vision was dismantled piece by piece as being impractical or inconveniencing certain businesses or motorists. We were told to accept compromise.

I am not in a very accepting mood these days. How should I reconcile the death of a man on his way to work a few months ago in Old Town Goleta with a few stubborn business people who don't want to move a few parking spaces on Hollister to off-street lots to provide bike lanes?

I am grateful to be alive, but I sit here in a lot of pain from a lot of broken bones.

Every year Goleta becomes more designed to move volumes of cars and we are supposed to patiently wait forever for a few crumbs of safe routes that never keep up with the increasing dangers. There simply are no safe routes in much of Goleta any more.

We suffer violence every day as a result of bad community planning. Even if we are not directly hit with violence, we suffer the assault of possible violence with every attempt to move around our community.

We commit acts of violence around the world to secure the flow of oil and other materials to maintain this violent life here at home. I started saying these things over 20 years ago when our country's support of the religious terrorists in Afghanistan in the name of oil first got me politically active.

Active to stop such global insanity and to counter it with using and promoting sustainable transportation. But never have I said these things while sitting in pain from that violence. I feel like a victim of war.

The time for compromise with insanity is over. We must demand that our community be designed for safe access for everyone, including the one-third of the population that doesn't drive.

We must recover our vision of Old Town Goleta as a model of accessibility and livability without a car. We must demand that the Fairview Avenue overpass be fixed to allow safe crossing for cyclists and pedestrians. We must demand that parking be removed from sections of Hollister to allow wider sidewalks and real bike lanes.

Highway 217 was recognized as the car path to which motor vehicles would be diverted so surface streets would be reclaimed for humans.

The Highway 217 traffic light plan was stupid. Other plans are possible if we demand them. We must demand connections from the back parts of Old Town Goleta to Highway 217, in both directions. That means some sort of under or over crossing.

Cars must be able to get to Highway 217 with new connections from the back of Old Town Goleta so that they don't pollute the surface streets with their violence.

Our community can be livable and accessible for all. We have to be willing to spend the money to make those safe routes, and now.

As you can see on the Sierra Club anti-sprawl Web site, we spend hundreds of billions of dollars each year subsidizing people to drive and give lip service to anything else. No one has the right to tell me or anyone else that we should be patient as we suffer broken bones and worse.

We need safe routes everywhere now. We must not compromise with insanity.

Robert Bernstein, a Goleta resident, is currently at the Rehabilitation Institute of Santa Barbara.