The morning and afternoon commutes on Highway 101 between Carpinteria to Santa Barbara usually mean bumper to bumper traffic. The big problem is with a ten mile stretch of Highway 101 from Carpinteria, to Montecito, where the freeway goes from three, to two lanes. The bottleneck creates major traffic jams.
There’s been talk about widening the 101 for decades. This week, a key step towards that effort is officially getting underway.
It’s a $60 million dollar project to replace the Casitas Pass, and Linden Avenue overpasses across the 101. Jim Kemp is Executive Director of the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments, which has championed the project. Kemp says it will replace two substandard bridges which have impaired traffic flow in Carpinteria, as well as setting the stage for a 101 widening effort.
David Beard, the Project and Design Manager for the Linden and Casitas Pass Bridge Project, says the idea has been talked about since 1996, but the plans have been completed, and there’s funding in place for the work.
City of Carpinteria officials were heavily involved in the planning process. The 101 congestion isn’t just confined to the highway, it spills into the city as commuters jam surface streets looking for alternate routes. City Manager Dave Durflinger says the project will help deal with a number of traffic flow issues in the city:
The bridge replacement project is expected to take four years. Officials caution that traffic in parts of Carpinteria will get worse before it gets better, and people will have to be patient. Plans call for two existing freeway lanes in each direction through the city to remain open during daytime hours, with lane closures as needed for construction occurring during overnight hours.
Long term, planning is underway on adding carpool lanes from Carpinteria to Montecito, but officials say realistically, even if it gets all the needed approvals and funding that project would take at least a decade.
