No Bridge of Agreement

Attorney Marc Chytilo wasn’t impressed by Caltrans’s public meeting last week on the proposed suicide barrier for Cold Spring Bridge. “It was hugely overstaffed and overproduced,” he said, estimating the agency spent $15,000-$20,000 on creating “elaborate presentation materials” and bussing in nearly a dozen staffers. “They had their posters in frames,” he chuckled.

Chytilo — representing members of the anti-barrier group Friends of the Bridge, who contend a blockade would ruin the span’s panoramic view of the Santa Ynez Valley — successfully sued Caltrans into reworking and recirculating its report on the nine-foot, seven-inch fencing that would line the historic steel structure. The proposed mesh wall is meant to prevent any more people from leaping off what has become a magnet for those wishing to take their own lives in Santa Barbara County. Fifty-four have jumped to the rocks below since 1963.

Chytilo argued that the state transportation agency’s original 2009 Environmental Impact Report (EIR) failed to properly address the visual and cultural impacts such a barrier would have on the bridge, and that the public wasn’t given the opportunity to weigh in on the project. Judge Thomas Anderle agreed, and ordered Caltrans to stop work in July until a supplement to the EIR was vetted by Santa Barbara residents and then resubmitted for approval. A 52-year-old man jumped the same week workers halted construction.