In a rare retreat for the City of Santa Barbara’s transportation staff, plans to narrow a portion of East Cabrillo Boulevard to one lane in each direction and install angled parking have hit a road block.

Angry residents packed Tuesday’s City Council meeting objecting to the city’s Vision Zero plan. City transportation planners believe they can make the strip of street from Niños Drive east to Highway 101 safer.

The officials estimate the plan can eliminate as many as 22 crashes in the area over the next 10 years. Between 2008 and 2017, there were 43 collisions reported in the area.

The transportation planners want to eliminate the parallel parking on the ocean side of the street along the East Beach volleyball courts and install angled parking spaces that motorists must back into. They say the plan would increase the number of parking spaces to 100 from about 60, provide greater driver visibility, and safer loading and unloading because cars would back directly toward the beach.

Derrick Bailey, the city’s supervising transportation engineer, said Carlsbad and Oceanside are shifting to the practice, and he provided pictures of Vancouver to illustrate how the parking would work.

“Reverse angle parking is something that is new in Santa Barbara,” he said.

Currently, Cabrillo has two lanes in each direction, but the city wants to restripe the street to allow one lane for cars in each direction; one lane for bicyclists in each direction; and the angled parking. The city also wants to replace the traffic signal at the Cabrillo-Niños intersection with a four-way stop sign.

Nearby residents objected to the plan.

“This is about safety in this area,” Linda Jaffe said. “The pedestrians will not be safer. The families and children will not be safer if there is just a stop sign and not a stop light there.”

She also said motorists stopping in the middle of the street to back into parking spaces is a recipe for disaster.

“You are going to have people on both sides of the road making U-turns constantly to get those premium spaces,” Jaffe said. “They are going to be circling like fish, like sharks, to get those spaces, and U-turning every which way at all hours of the day and night. It is not safe.”

Bailey said transportation staff talked to beachgoers about the plan and that “people were very confident they would get it.”

“There is obviously going to be a learning curve,” he said.

Some neighbors complained they were only notified of the proposed changes nine days ago.

Judy Frank, board president of the East Beach Townhouses, said there was “minimal outreach” and called the city staff’s characterization of the changes “a lot of smoke and mirrors.”

She said nearby residents know the area better than the transportation planners and have a better understanding of the potential impacts.

“Most of us live here 24/7 so we are aware of what happens in front of our complexes better than the Sunday volleyball players or occasional beachgoers,” Frank said.

City Council members seemed to express support for changes that could make the area safer, but agreed that transportation planners should do more neighborhood outreach. They also want city staff to present more than just one plan for changes.

“This is an opporutnity to have continued conversation and maybe a little more outreach,” Councilwoman Kristen Sneddon said. “It would be nice for the council to see options.”

Councilman Oscar Gutierrez was more blunt.

“This situation seems to come up more often about not being notified and not being given enough time to react to proposed plans,” he said. “We should probably give the public a little more time to digest this.”

The City Council instructed transportation staff to consider more options for the area. City Adminstrator Paul Casey said a modified version of the plan would be brought to the council in about six weeks.

— Noozhawk staff writer Joshua Molina can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) . Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.