Earlier this month, an 8-year-old boy was struck by a car traveling 40 mph on San Antonio Creek Road, a residential street known for its lack of sidewalks, narrow shoulders and high speed limit.
Kingston Baillie was riding his bike home from a friend’s house on San Antonio Creek Road in the evening of June 8. Along his route, a car coming over the ridge of a hill struck him within the neighborhood’s posted speed limit of 40 mph.
The accident has led to a heightened awareness of the safety concerns on the street. Officials and parents are sounding the alarm that something must be done.
Kathryn Birch has had concerns about the road since she and her three kids moved into the area seven years ago.
“We’ve had friends live in the neighborhood for years and they were always like ‘yeah we love the house, but you know the road is… it’s not great,’” Birch said. “For pedestrians and bicyclists, particularly, you know, young bicyclists.”
The issue stems from when the road was originally built as a major connector to Highway 154, which is why it has such narrow shoulders—none at all along certain parts—and no sidewalks to begin with, to say nothing of its original 55 mph speed limit.
It also serves as an emergency fire escape route which is blocking the county from placing any traffic calming devices along the road—like speed humps or dips—that could slow an evacuation.
For the past five years, Birch has led the neighborhood charge for a safer street by working with the Santa Barbara County Public Works Department to improve the conditions of the road.
Kingston was taken to the hospital by ambulance, where it was determined he had a clavicle fracture, a possibly fractured leg and a concussion, said his mother in an email to the News-Press.
Both Kingston and the driver were obeying the laws of the road. The road, however, is dangerous.
The night Kingston was sent to the hospital, Birch posted a petition urging the county to build a sidewalk. So far it’s garnered 221 signatures.
Santa Barbara County has been working with the community to make the road safer for the past four years. Some improvements have been made to the street’s infrastructure, like the lanes of the road getting painted to keep cars off of the already narrow shoulders.
Birch said that signage has also been placed in the area by both neighbors and the county that feature statements like “share the road” and “these roads are our sidewalks.”
Additionally, the county conducted an engineering and traffic study on the road that has allowed the speed limit to be reduced from 55 to 40 mph. Thanks to a further 5mph speed limit reduction, the largest the state allows, the current speed limit is now 35 mph. Signs for the new speed limit were updated only a few days after Kingston was struck.
Because the state still considers the road to be a highway connector, it does not qualify for a typical residential area speed limit of 25 mph, according to the Public Works Department.
Professor Trisalyn Nelson is a concerned neighbor and director of the Center for Spatial Studies and Data Science at UCSB, where she gathers and researches data on active transportation to better evaluate city planning. She’s also the founder of BikeMaps.org, a website that tracks and analyzes cycling accidents, Kingston’s among them.
Nelson recently wrote an op-ed detailing what changes need to be made to the road. The biggest takeaway being there’s no separation between traffic, cyclists and pedestrians, and that with an increasing number of kids in the community, there’s no other option than to walk in the street.
“We need mode-specific infrastructure,” Nelson told the News-Press.
First District Santa Barbara County Supervisor Roy Lee said in an email to the News-Press that the county is working on a feasibility study for a path or sidewalk.
“I never want to see a kid get hit by a car,” Lee said in an email. “That’s scary. I definitely see the concerns. We are doing everything we can to protect people walking on San Antonio Creek. We started by putting some measures in place to reduce speeds, including tightening lanes and changing the speed limit to 35. We will keep working with the community and moving the ball forward until it’s a safer street.”
