Starting with Safety First!

Santa Barbara County has many of the ingredients needed for active transportation: great weather, relatively flat city centers, walkable streets, and a robust and growing bike network. On paper, it’s an ideal place to walk or bike for everyday trips.

So why do so many people still rely on cars?

For many, the biggest barrier is safety—or the perception of safety. People are unlikely to bike or walk if they feel at risk of being hit by a car, even if bike lanes or sidewalks exist. Understanding where people feel unsafe, and where incidents are actually happening, is key to making active transportation more accessible.

For that reason, we’re excited to announce the launch of the Santa Barbara County Active Transportation Dashboard, starting with the safety page. Data about biking and walking is often incomplete or hard to find. This dashboard brings official and community-reported safety data together in one place, revealing patterns, trends, and hotspots for collisions and near-misses across the county.

Use the safety page to explore which areas and intersections feel safer, and where improvements are needed. This information supports better street design, targeted safety improvements, and smarter infrastructure investments.

Want to help improve safety where you live? You can contribute directly through BikeMaps.org, the crowdsourced platform powering the dashboard. Nervous about a specific intersection? Had a close call or collision? Add your experience to the map.

Together, these shared insights turn everyday experiences into powerful data, helping make Santa Barbara County safer and more welcoming for everyone who walks, bikes, or rolls.

While we celebrate this launch, the work is far from over! We are hard at work on additional pages to display data on local bike and pedestrian volumes, infrastructure, and equity. Stay tuned for updates on future pages.

This work was funded through California Assembly Bill 140 as a Regional Early-Action Planning Grant and administered by the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments as a part of the state’s strategic investment toward a more sustainable, resilient, and inclusive future.

In conclusion, check out the dashboard -> sbactivetransport.org