Good Morning, and thank you for inviting the University to present an update on its recent activities concerning Highway 217.

I speak as Co-Chair of the University's Highway 217 Review Committee. Our committee was formed in late 1999 to analyze the impacts of the Goleta Old Town Revitalization Plan on the University, and the committee consists of representatives from all groups on campus - staff, students, and faculty. We will have our 50th 90-minute meeting tomorrow. Our proceedings are open, and all our correspondence is available on the internet at http://www.ucsb.edu/campus-topics/217/.

The campus community supports aspects of the Revitalization Plan. The part of the plan that would place traffic interruptions on Highway 217 creates the principal impact on the University community, and all campus groups, through their elected representatives, have overwhelmingly expressed opposition to the placement of stoplights on Highway 217.

Sentiment of the University community has beenuniformly and consistently communicated to Santa Barbara County. In 1997 95 individuals from the campus community signed letters of comment on the Revitalization plan EIR that did not support changes on the 217.

Our principal concern is connectivity. The University is intended to be an interactive -- perhaps the most interactive -- State institution. In addition to teaching and research, community activities at the University range from basketball games and screening of movies to continuing education and public lectures by recent Nobel Laureates. Our Santa Barbara campus is surrounded on three sides by water, and its isolation is compounded by the Airport on the Goleta Slough side.

Highway 217 connects the principal thoroughfare of our County to the University, which is the County's largest employer. The daytime population of the University peninsula is comparable to that of downtown Santa Barbara. We view the 217 as an umbilical cord to our South Coast region and to our State.

The University of California has existed for 132 years, and we consider changes to the 217, our vision extends at least 100 years into the future. Our sister campuses that lack freeway access have experienced related difficulties in their ability to carry out their mission for our State. Indeed most of the younger campuses, like ours in Santa Barbara, have direct freeway access so that they may wax, on a 100-year time scale, to their fullest promise of excellence and distinction for our State.

We are also greatly concerned with the safety of travelers, many of whom are under 25 years of age. At its opening on August 14, 1963, the Caltrans Director Robert Bradford dedicated Highway 217 to safety. Data from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration indicate that fatalities on the 217 would triple if it were downgraded to a high-speed arterial with stoplights.

Our Committee was formed last year when the real possibility of intersections on the 217 became widely known. We promptly commenced a series of meetings with the County to work out a solution that would be acceptable to all parties. The first of these meetings occurred on March 16, 2000, and further meetings were held on April 20, June 16, August 22, and September 19. A partial description of this joint effort should be available in today's staff report for agenda item 13.

I would like to recount a specific aspect of that joint work, omitted in the staff report. This is mostly a technical matter. It is central to understanding the University's actions.

A principal focus of the joint work we started with the County was the preparation of traffic congestion studies for the EIR on the Ekwill and Fowler Road projects. The University agreed to undertake and pay for those studies, and the County agreed to undertake the environmental evaluations.

As you know, traffic modeling consists of two parts. In the first part, traffic flows are estimated using a regional traffic model. Completion of the first part took some seven months, and was largely obligatory even without University involvement.

In the second part, Levels of Service (LOS) are estimated -- these are the grades that run from A, best, to F, worst, mostly for intersections.

A County Transportation Division Staff member (Jeff Knowles) instructed the University, in the joint meetings and through e-mails, to estimate Levels of Service in a particular way, a way that had been used in parts of the EIR for the Old Town Revitalization Plan. County Transportation Division Staff gave us input files and computer software to carry out their instructions.

University consultants performed the Level of Service analysis in the manner specified and approved in advance by County Transportation Division staff between early July and the August 22 joint meeting. The results surprised everyone -- the introduction of intersections on the 217 had little significant effect on traffic congestion in the Hollister corridor.

Late at that August 22 meeting, County Planning Staff informed us the particular Level of Service (LOS) analysis was inconsistent with County Policy. I'm no expert on County Policy, but the written County Policy I've seen allows Transportation Division Staff to designate, in advance, the method of LOS analysis, which is what happened here. In any event, the University promptly made the additional studies requested by the County Planning Staff, and the results changed, as we reported at the September 19 meeting. The differences can be as much as 2 levels of service. An intersection assigned a 'C' LOS under the first method specified by the County can be assigned an 'E' LOS under the second method.

These differences are significant in this case. The first method indicates that there is no significant congestion relief provided by new intersections on Highway 217. The second method indicates that a single intersection on Hollister Avenue gets significantly less congested.

We have studied the nature of the discrepancies, and conducted traffic counts at some of the relevant intersections. We have a reasonable understanding of the origin of the discrepancies.

However, at the meeting on September 19, and in a subsequent letter of October 18 of Supervisor Marshall, the County unconditionally dictated that the second method of LOS analysis that shall be used in the County's EIR.

Our committee could accept any form of the traffic analysis that was verified to be accurate. Our own traffic counts and studies of the issue indicate that the method now dictated by the County is not accurate.

It is the view of our committee that these unilateral actions by the County, the subsequent initiation of the EIR and dictation of a timeline, terminated joint University-County collaboration on solving the challenge of Highway 217. It is not the case that the University arbitrarily "…elected not to concur with the established timeline…". The County's unilateral actions caused the University to seek assistance from Caltrans and the CTC.

We have proceeded to design, based on the first LOS analysis, area improvements that we believe will result in superior traffic congestion relief. We have met with stakeholders including the Page Hotel, the Airport, and the Airport Plaza, and we believe our improvements meet their requirements.

We find that there is no need for impairment of the freeway connection that links the University to the South Coast region and to the State.

Recently the County has proposed re-establishment of joint workshops to resolve the challenge of Highway 217. It is likely that the Highway 217 Review Committee will be happy and perhaps eager to participate in any process that maintains as the principal goal that there will be no impairment to the freeway connection provided by Highway 217.

However, not a single University goal is listed among the six objectives contained in the County's recent proposal. Our Committee has directed me to indicate that we are therefore unable to participate in that specific new process as described by the County. A revised process might acceptable, however.

Our position is that an unimpaired freeway connection to the Santa Barbara Campus is in the vital long-term interest of the University, the South Coast Region, and the State of California.

Thank you.