Cruising to Santa Barbara for the weekend always sounds wondrous (the beaches! the biking! the hurricane margaritas at the Palace Grill! Those zoo giraffes that eat right from your hand!). But then there’s the inevitable freeway to face on Friday afternoon (or any afternoon, really). Someone hiccups in a car just up ahead on the101 freeway and suddenly you’re stopped dead somewhere below Thousand Oaks and can’t seem to get rolling again. So you crawl through the bumper-to-bumper mess in Camarillo and then noodle your way around the stop-and-start gridlock near Oxnard.
By the time you finally spy the landmark Big Yellow House on the hill at Summerland, your easy two-hour getaway has morphed into nearly four hours—and counting—of traffic hell.
Memo to self: Next time, take the train.
Santa Barbara is an ideal destination for a car-free escape, especially with gas prices at record highs this summer. “One of the great pleasures in life,” says Ralph Festig, president of the Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition, “is being on the train and watching the traffic on the 101 as you go past.”
My book Great Escapes: Southern California includes a chapter exploring an easy car-free getaway to the Central Coast. You can board the train at Union Station in Los Angeles (there are numerous suburban stops, too) and step off two 2 hours and 36 minutes later at the Santa Barbara station on State Street, the city’s main drag. Hotels, restaurants, shopping, the beach, and amazing farmers’ markets are just steps away.
Santa Barbara’s Car-Free Project even offers discounts to visitors who leave their cars at home — deals on Amtrak fares, hotels, and attractions such as wine-country tours in the comfort of a biodiesel-powered Mercedes van. You can request a handy (and free) info pack from Santa Barbara’s Car-Free Project here. Also be sure to visit Green Santa Barbara, too.
