Traffic Moves Stopless Through Santa Barbara

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - The last stoplight on Highway 101 here came down last week, removing a notorious freeway bottleneck.

Department of Transportation workers hauled away the light at a ceremony that featured celebratory songs, awards to passing motorists, political speeches, a gay-rights demonstration and the vigil of a silent, bearded man whose sign proclaimed him "The Last Hitchhiker."

Freeways have never been popular in Santa Barbara, where no-growth advocates delayed their arrival for four decades. When the first freeway was proposed in the 1950s, business people feared it would keep tourists from stopping.

When an elevated freeway won preliminary approval, others complained that it cut off the view of the coast from downtown. State planners produced a new design that saved the view.

By that time, in the 1970s, many Santa Barbarans no longer wanted residents of Los Angeles to stop in their town. But California was governed then by Jerry Brown, who had even less use for freeways than traditional Santa Barbarans.

PEDESTRIAN DEATHS AND AIR POLLUTION

Until last year, four stoplights on Highway 101 through Santa Barbara caused delays of four to eight minutes each for motorists. Traffic sometimes backed up for miles.

In time, it became clear to almost everyone in Santa Barbara that the lights were a hazard. Several pedestrians were killed or injured while trying to run across the highway as the lights changed, and a federal official estimated this year that 60 percent of the city's air pollution was produced by cars idling at the stoplights.

The lights came down one by one in the past year. In July, a ceremony was held to celebrate the opening of an architecturally impressive underpass beneath the freeway on State Street, the main business thoroughfare.

But traffic still was not rolling unimpeded through Santa Barbara because the freeway was delayed a final time by the discovery of toxic soil near a new interchange. Removal of this soil required several months, and the final interchange is not scheduled to open until December.

SURPRISED MOTORISTS ARE HONORED

With removal of the last light, however, motorists can travel Highway 101 without stopping for 435 miles from downtown San Francisco to Los Angeles on a mostly coastal route.

The last-light ceremony was long awaited in Santa Barbara but came as a surprise to motorists who happened to be passing through. They were pulled over and given certificates declaring that they had been in the final wave of motorists forced to stop for traffic lights here.