Sullivan Israel: Bringing cars back to State Street is a life-or-death decision

The current State Street Master Plan proposes allowing private automobiles on the street from 10 p.m. to 10 a.m. every day. While there are many reasons this is not a desirable outcome of five years of planning effort, including outspoken community support for a completely car-free street, in this article I want to focus on the effects of this decision on safety. 

Before 2020, the area that is now the State Street Promenade was the 3rd most dangerous street in the entire city in terms of traffic fatalities and severe (life-altering) injuries.

The street was identified in the city’s Vision Zero plan as needing serious infrastructure interventions to address this safety crisis. As many know, the pandemic came and the street was closed to cars. Since 2020, State Street hasn’t even made it onto the list of the top 72 most dangerous streets in the city presented in the Vision Zero Plan and Safe Streets for All update.

It turns out that taking cars off of the street with the highest pedestrian and bike volumes in the city leads to an increase in safety. 

Now the City Council is about to consider bringing cars back to the street, seemingly for no other reason than that it represents some kind of “compromise.” I think it’s important to look at the traffic safety data to understand exactly what cars on State Street looked like in the past.  

I pulled the following data from TIMS, a web-based tool developed by UC Berkeley SafeTREC that provides free, easy access to California’s Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System (SWITRS) data managed by the California Highway Patrol (CHP). It is important to note that only the most severe crashes make it into this dataset; the actual number is higher. It is estimated that 32% of non-fatal injury crashes do not get reported. My selection area is shown below: 

I choose not to include the Granada block in this analysis, as it has had a unique design for the last few years. Here are the overall results: 

There were 45 crashes on State Street between Jan. 1, 2014 and Feb. 29, 2020—a period of six years. Two were fatal, two resulted in life-altering injuries and 21 resulted in some kind of injury (the latter two categories are the most underreported).  

The most common type of crash was a rear-end. This may be due to the stop-start traffic that existed on State Street due to mid-block crossings, jaywalking, and unpredictable driver behavior. 

The highest concentration of crashes was in the evening, with a peak on Saturday night between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., and the second highest peak from 9 p.m. to midnight. Remember, the current plan calls for the street to be open to cars at night.  

The most common type of violation reported as a cause for a crash was unsafe speeds.  

Nearly 36% of victims in these crashes were cyclists, and 30% were drivers. A recent bicycle count found that even on a regular weekday, around 2,500 cyclists bike on State Street, with a large concentration during the morning and evening commutes. 

By age, the highest shares of victims were between 55-64, and 20-24. They were also most likely to be male. 

Failure to yield and unsafe driver behavior were major causes for crashes. 

60% of crashes involving a pedestrian happened under street light conditions. Again, the current plan is to open the street to cars at night. 

In 60% of crashes involving a pedestrian, the pedestrian was in a crosswalk, either mid-block or at an intersection. This shows that a majority of pedestrian-involved crashes involved a driver being at-fault.  

There are many reasons not to bring back private automobiles to State Street, including community preferences.

As shown above, there is also strong data to support a car-free street. Looking at pie charts and data, it is easy to forget that each of these crashes involved a real person, and had effects on their family. One of these victims was named Gilbert William Ramirez, 90. In 2019, he was struck by a driver in a mid-block crossing on State Street between Haley and Cota Streets. The street has become demonstrably safer since the closure to cars, losing its place on this list of the city’s most dangerous streets. How can we justify bringing cars back to this space, particularly at night? It truly is a life or death situation.  

Tell the City Council you don’t want cars on the street by making a public comment in-person or online at the Tuesday, April 28meeting. You can also email them a public comment (SBCityCouncil@santabarbaraca.gov), and CC the project team at StateStreetMasterPlan@SantaBarbaraCA.gov.