COAST would like to thank our newest council member, Cathy Murillo, who went out there herself to observe and spoke eloquently to the needs of the many walkers in the area.

We also want to thank all the people who e-mailed and called. Brittany Odermann Heaton, Robert Adams and Ed France spoke in favor of alternative 2A – thank you!

Through all of our efforts, we turned this around.

On January 11, representatives of COAST attended a very special ribbon cutting ceremony. It was for the footpath on San Ysidro Road leading to Montecito Union School that COAST helped bring about. MUS Superintendent Tammy Murphy and Supervisor Salud Carbajal led the ceremony together with all the students of the school. The kids actually cut the ribbon. They had placed thank-you notes on all the mailboxes on San Ysidro Road and left a sunflower at each one. Large groups of up to 50 children and their parents walked the new path to school that day. Later, when the kids were in school, dog walkers and joggers enjoyed it as well.

We thank Supervisor Carbajal who rolled up his sleeves and got things done. We thank our County Public Works staff, above all Matt Dobberteen, who worked hard on this. We thank all the parents who did not stop pushing for this. Most of all, we thank Stephen Murdoch for getting the ball rolling and for his generosity to COAST. He is still in London and so could not be with us on this special day, but his parents, Joan and Bill Murdoch, were present. Exactly five years ago, in January of 2007, Stephen and I first had coffee at Pierre Lafond’s in the Upper Village to talk about a path because he had no safe place to walk to school with his two young daughters. Afterward, we walked along San Ysidro Road together, clambering over rocks and tree roots. Now the path we imagined has become a reality. I hope that one day, Stephen will be back and walk to school on this path with his daughters. (Report by Eva Inbar)

Photos by: Lisa Valencia

In the City of Santa Barbara, more than one-half of all residents only own one car or no car at all. And in the Eastside of Santa Barbara, those numbers are even higher. There is a great concentration of pedestrians in the Eastside, people of all ages who walk to school, walk to the bus stop for work, and walk to their friends’ and families’ homes.

If you talk with any Eastside resident on the street, they will tell you that they do not feel safe walking in their neighborhood. Sparse streetlights, speeding cars, and unsafe crosswalks lare the main issues that are adversely affecting pedestrian safety in the Eastside. Most recently, on October 7th, a 15-year-old was struck by a truck while crossing Milpas and Ortega. We are calling for immediate action to make the corner of Milpas and Ortega safer, and we also are calling on the City of Santa Barbara to improve overall walking conditions to the Eastside.

This is important because we are all pedestrians, and we all deserve to walk safely in our neighborhood!

If you support this, please click the link below to sign our petition:

http://www.change.org/petitions/helene-schneider-mayor-improve-traffic-and-pedestrian-safety-in-the-eastside-of-santa-barbara

If you’d like to get involved, please contact Caitlin by email, or by calling (805) 875-3562.

For a helmet fitting video, please click on the Safe Routes to School tab above.