The 12-mile journey to Carpinteria from Santa Barbara can sometimes take as long as 40 minutes because of the ongoing roadworks to add one more lane to the highway. Word from SBRoads.com, the information arm for the project, is that these are the final segments of the extensive project, which should finally be finished by 2028. But this week, lanes will close at night as prep work for concrete paving takes place.
On the northbound 101, the left-hand lane will close at night — from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. — from Evans Avenue in Summerland to Hermosillo Road in Montecito on Tuesday and Wednesday, September 8 and 9, further narrowing to one lane on Thursday, September 10. For the southbound 101, the left lane will close from Milpas Street in Santa Barbara to Olive Mill Road in Montecito on Tuesday and Wednesday from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m., similarly narrowing to one lane on Thursday. Drivers will want to be aware that off- and on-ramps may be affected at San Ysidro, Olive Mill, and Milpas Street.
Removing the two-lane bottleneck through Montecito should improve conditions for the 109,000 vehicles that drive along the 101 daily. The two lanes caused traffic jams second only to the stoplights in Santa Barbara that brought highway traffic to a complete stop every eight minutes or so until 1991, when the last red light went silent. The 101 carpool-lane project actually began in Santa Barbara with the Milpas to Montecito segment in 2012. The next phase skipped down to the county line and worked its way westward through Carpinteria, Padaro, and Summerland. Not only were carpool lanes added, but bridges over several creeks, bike lanes, pedestrian walkways, sound walls, plantings, and improvements to on- and off-ramps and nearby intersections…