Ongoing Highway 101 construction through Montecito won’t exacerbate any flooding caused by an unusually wet El Niño winter, officials say.
The assessment includes the stretch of north and southbound lanes at Hot Springs Road—one of the corridors hardest hit in 2018, when torrential rain over the Thomas Fire burn scar caused massive destruction.
Rivers of water, mud, boulders and trees killed 23 people and damaged or destroyed 500 structures. The tragedy closed the highway for nearly two weeks and caused more than $1 billion in estimated direct and indirect costs.
“In the Hot Springs area, the freeway has the majority of its drainage completed,” said Caltrans Office Chief Joe Erwin, who oversees the agency’s Central Coast district. “There’s still some work in the median we’re going to be doing.”
While the project site will be as ready as it can be, a massive weather event could still cause disruptions, Erwin told the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments Thursday.
“From the freeway perspective, we have as much drainage as we can put in to handle whatever comes onto it,” Erwin said, responding to questions from Solvang Mayor David Brown, an SBCAG board member.
“To say that it’s one hundred percent flood proof, I don’t think the entire region can handle major significant flooding, those fifty-year storms,” Erwin said. “It overwhelms everything.”
Weather experts say a powerful “super” El Niño is actively developing and expected to persist through the fall and winter. An El Niño occurs when the ocean surface warms in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, driving widespread atmospheric changes.
Santa Barbara during an El Niño tends to experience increased rainfall and warmer winters. While not always destructive, the abundant precipitation can lead to dangerous flooding.
As transportation officials pondered Highway 101 flooding, they also discussed construction progress.
“When do we exit the corridor, from a project perspective?” asked SBCAG Chair Bob Nelson, Fifth District Santa Barbara County Supervisor.
The current phase—the last in a traffic congestion relief effort that dates to 2012—remains on track to finish with all new lanes open in December 2028, said Fred Luna, SBCAG director of project delivery and construction.
“That’s the current forecast,” Luna said. “We’re still on schedule for that. There may be some additional off-traffic things that might need to get done. Then there’s landscaping, of course.”
Granite Construction crews are improving sight lines, updating storm drains, enhancing lighting, installing new signs, reconstructing the Cabrillo Boulevard interchange and, among other changes, adding a new carpool lane in each direction between Hermosillo Road and Salinas Street.
The improvements are part of a larger $700 million reconstruction of Highway 101 from Carpinteria to Santa Barbara.
The multi-phase effort benefited from a construction project delivery method that saved $148 to $253 million, officials say. They described a process called Construction Manager General Contractor, or CMGC, in which a contractor enters earlier than normal to act as a pre-construction project manager.
That early collaboration reduces risk and saves time and money if and when the contractor takes on the full project as a general contractor.
As the current project winds down, a prominent concrete “batch plant” and rock crushing facility on the southbound side of the highway will close and disappear, officials say.
Commuters can expect some traffic relief soon.
“Public sentiment has naturally leaned toward construction fatigue as work at the Cabrillo interchange has commenced,” according to an SBCAG report. “The overall Montecito segment is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2026, weather permitting.”
