Bicycles As Alternative Transportation
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The County of Santa Barbara on September 4th, 2001 put forth their circulation plan for they coming year. In this plan there are millions of dollars designated for bicycle paths in the county. The reality of the county's road system is that it is faced with close to $100 million dollars of deferred road and bridge repair. There are agricultural roads that are being abandoned for the lack of money to bring them into good repair and streets in West Goleta that are going without resurfacing for the lack of paving funds. The county does not have enough money to fund many of their projects and the 3 South Coast supervisors (Marshall, Rose, and Schwartz) have promoted the use of certificates of participation to meet the County's budget shortfall.
This is the same plan that came close to placing the county into bankruptcy in the late 1980's and early 1990's. Among the projects (not all) that were proposed with the full backing of the South Coast Supervisors for 2002: 1) $500,000.00 for Hollister beautification much of this will be spent on bike paths and placing planters in the middle of Hollister that will have the effect of narrowing the street and eliminating some on street parking, 2) Cathedral Oaks interchange at 101 $225,700.00 that includes questionable biking and walking paths, 3) San Jose Creek bike path - $200,000.00, 4) Santa Maria River levee bikeway - $878,000.00 the area that is in need county surface street road repair, 5) Orcutt Creek bike path - $301,000.00, 6) Cathedral Oaks bike path $303,200.00 while streets in the west Goleta need paving, 7) Refugio Road and Roblar Ave. bike lanes $1.6 million. The above County of Santa Barbara list of bicycle related projects came to $4,007,900.00 for a failed bike path policy and in face of both a local and national trend of fewer cyclists per population. These figures do not represent the finalized costs just what has been designated now. Mark Schneip, Ph. D, economist, recently surveyed the Goleta Valley in an overall look at trends and population.
At the January 2002 meeting of the Santa Barbara Rental Property Association Dr. Schneip reported that 2% of his sampling stated that they used bicycles as alternative transportation and a recreational pursuit. Once again an objective review of bicycle use shows a 30% reduction over the reported figures of SBCAG's Alternative Solutions (3%). This coincides with the past decade report that single driver auto use has risen by 15% in the county.
In the Winter, 2001-2002 issue of the SBCAG Regional Review the amount of money designated to be spent on all forms of transit is reported (appendix B). The following exercise will illustrate part of the problem. When assuming that the general population for the City of Santa Barbara is 100,000 and using the inflated figure of 2603 bikers published >>by the city, the per capita expenditure of funded SBCAG money on each bicycle rider is $741.00 dollars while the per capita expenditure on each driver is $7.50 dollars. Clearly the argument that cars are being subsidized at a higher rate per driver is not correct. Yet this is the argument that the majority of the Board of Supervisors and the Council for the City of Santa Barbara have stated as a rationale for continued funding of a failed program.