{"id":78725,"date":"2026-04-22T19:08:23","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T19:08:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/78725\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T19:08:23","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T19:08:23","slug":"sullivan-israel-bringing-cars-back-to-state-street-is-a-life-or-death-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/78725\/","title":{"rendered":"Sullivan Israel: Bringing cars back to State Street is a life-or-death decision"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The street was\u00a0identified\u00a0in the city\u2019s Vision Zero plan as\u00a0needing\u00a0serious infrastructure interventions to address this safety crisis. As many know, the pandemic came and the street was closed to cars. Since 2020, State Street\u00a0hasn\u2019t\u00a0even 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\u00a0update.<\/p>\n

It turns out that taking cars\u00a0off of\u00a0the street with the highest pedestrian and bike volumes in the city leads to an increase in safety.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now the City Council is about to consider bringing cars back to the street,\u00a0seemingly for\u00a0no other reason than that it\u00a0represents\u00a0some kind of \u201ccompromise.\u201d I think\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0important to look at the traffic safety data to understand exactly what cars on State Street looked like in the past.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

I pulled the following data from TIMS,\u00a0a web-based tool developed by\u00a0UC Berkeley SafeTREC<\/a>\u00a0that provides free, easy access to California\u2019s\u00a0Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System (SWITRS) data<\/a>\u00a0managed 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:\u00a0<\/p>\n

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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:\u00a0<\/p>\n

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There were 45 crashes on State Street between Jan. 1,\u00a02014\u00a0and Feb. 29, 2020\u2014a period of six years. Two were fatal, two resulted in life-altering injuries and 21\u00a0resulted in some kind of injury (the latter two categories are the most underreported).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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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.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The most common type of violation reported as a cause for a crash was unsafe speeds.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Nearly 36%\u00a0of victims in these crashes were cyclists, and 30% were drivers. A recent bicycle count found that even on a regular weekday, around 2,500\u00a0cyclists\u00a0bike on State Street, with a large concentration during the morning and evening commutes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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By age, the highest shares of victims were between 55-64,\u00a0and 20-24. They were also most likely to be male.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Failure to yield and unsafe driver behavior were major causes\u00a0for\u00a0crashes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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60% of crashes involving a pedestrian happened under street light conditions. Again, the current plan is to open the street to cars at night.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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In 60% of crashes involving a pedestrian, the pedestrian was\u00a0in\u00a0a crosswalk, either mid-block or at an intersection. This shows that a majority of pedestrian-involved crashes involved a driver being\u00a0at-fault.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are many reasons not to bring\u00a0back private automobiles\u00a0to State Street, including community preferences.<\/p>\n

As shown above, there is also strong data to support a car-free street.\u00a0Looking at pie charts and data, it\u00a0is easy to forget that each of these crashes involved a real\u00a0person, and\u00a0had effects on their family. One of these victims was named Gilbert William Ramirez, 90.\u00a0In 2019, he was struck by a driver in a mid-block crossing<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0State Street between Haley and Cota Streets. The street has become demonstrably safer since the closure\u00a0to\u00a0cars, losing its place on this list of the city\u2019s most dangerous streets. How can we justify bringing cars back to this space, particularly at night? It truly is a\u00a0life or death\u00a0situation.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tell the City Council you\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0want 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<\/a>), and CC the project team at\u00a0StateStreetMasterPlan@SantaBarbaraCA.gov<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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As a nonprofit, we\u2019re relying on community support to refound the News-Press. Will you join us and your neighbors by becoming a News-Press Partner today? We are all in this together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The current State Street Master Plan proposes allowing private automobiles on the street from 10 p.m. to 10…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[37,28527,28528],"class_list":["post-78725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-israel","tag-state-street","tag-strongtowns-sb"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116449935595104587","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}