Ask Lookout: Is there any way to lessen the time or impact of Murray Street Bridge construction?

The Murray Street Bridge retrofit project has been in the works for more than 30 years, but the realities of closing a major artery through Santa Cruz for many months still caught many community members by surprise. 

Over the past three months, the impacts have rippled across the city. The bridge closed to westbound traffic in March, and to two-way traffic on June 23. Commuters and residents aiming to get from one side of the Santa Cruz Harbor to the other must take a detour along Soquel Avenue and Capitola Road, and report intense congestion in these areas during commute times. Pedestrians and bicyclists can take a shorter path through Arana Gulch, or walk along a path that rings the harbor, connecting at the southern end. 

Both routes bypass the Seabright neighborhood on the west side of the bridge and the harbor area on the east side, accustomed to more than 17,000 cars passing through the thoroughfare daily. The effect of the loss of traffic was clear and immediate for some area business owners. Bars, coffeeshops and restaurants in the Seabright and harbor areas on either side of the bridge reported a 20 to 25% plunge in sales since the bridge fully closed in June. Some business owners said they are thinking of reducing hours and staff; several have already done so. “I’m trying to sound the alarm to staff, customers and people that care about Seabright. I’m worried that our oxygen is getting cut off in a big way,” said Karen Madura, owner of Seabright dive bar Brady’s Yacht Club. 

The bridge is getting a major upgrade, with a seismic-retrofitted foundation meant to withstand the next “big one,” as well as a wider bridge deck for vehicle traffic and bike lanes, and an 8-foot-wide pedestrian path on the south side of the bridge. But it won’t be completed until February 2028 at the earliest. Some residents and business owners are staring down the barrel of the next three years and wondering, could this have been planned any better? 

On July 2, Lookout reported on the effects on area business, and readers voiced questions about the project on social media. Could construction be handled differently to improve vehicle and pedestrian access, or lessen the amount of time the bridge is closed? Lookout posed the top queries to Santa Cruz public works director Nathan Nguyen. 

Three years is a long time. Is there any way to speed up construction?

The area has several characteristics that make construction challenging, said Nguyen. The harbor area is very environmentally sensitive, and it’s a really tight space. 

There’s not a lot of room for construction crews and large equipment to maneuver, and access areas around the Murray Street Bridge are limited. Only so many workers and machines can operate at once, which slows down progress. “That’s part of the reason why we have to do these full closures or only a single lane in one direction at a time to not confuse the public or the contractors,” Nguyen said. 

The project is also limited by roughly a dozen different work permits granted by a variety of regulatory agencies, including California Department of Fish & Wildlife, California Coastal Commission, Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Each made its own restrictions on the project, and many aim to limit the impact of construction on the nearby ecosystems, waterways and wildlife. 

That’s far more than a typical roadway project, said Nguyen. Roads are usually surrounded by sidewalks or other infrastructure, so harming sensitive ecosystems isn’t a big concern. But the area around the bridge is complex, with many different environments that the city has to work around. Restrictions get tighter, and construction times get longer. 

One permit prohibits any work in the harbor itself from June 15 to Oct. 15, which prevents the construction company from doing the drilling and pile-driving necessary to reinforce the foundations. The construction is scheduled to maximize the windows of opportunities granted by the permits, while prioritizing other kinds of work when the crews can’t be in the water. 

Adding more crew members or working longer hours won’t ameliorate these issues, said Nguyen, in part because the project is heavily dependent on machinery, not manpower. More workers can’t make a crane run faster. And the construction company can’t work 24 hours a day because the city has to consider construction impacts on nearby residents. “The neighbors that are adjacent to the project wouldn’t want to have pile-driving happening in the middle of the night,” he said. 

Could the bridge be closed directionally during commute hours, i.e., open to westbound traffic in the morning and eastbound traffic in the afternoon?

It might sound practical, but alternating traffic directions on a bridge according to commute hours can be confusing for both drivers and workers, said Nguyen. People might forget or be unaware that the bridge changes direction at a certain time of day, and that they would need to reroute. In these cases, the city also takes on more liability, because it would have to create a pathway for cars that accidentally go in the wrong direction to turn around.

“It’s more standard to keep it consistent in one direction,” said Nguyen. “We purposely went with an eastbound-only direction to accommodate the majority of the traffic within the community that travels mainly in the afternoon to eastbound on the bridge.”

However, the city is looking into opening one lane up to two-way traffic in January when the full bridge closure is complete, using temporary traffic control or signals on either side. Nguyen is looking at whether there is enough capacity for waiting cars on either side to accommodate this plan. The current plan is for the bridge to reopen to eastbound traffic only.

Could the city create a temporary pedestrian and bicycle bridge across the harbor during construction? 

No, because construction work will affect the surrounding area around the bridge. The large equipment needed for this project, including a crane and pile driver, require a lot of space to operate, making building a nearby bridge impossible. 

The city did consider converting the existing railroad bridge across the harbor into a pathway, but it’s still technically an active rail line, said Nguyen. The Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission owns that bridge, and it wasn’t feasible to take that rail line offline in order to build an Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant bike and pedestrian path.

The alternate route through Arana Gulch and the upper harbor path was created for bicyclists and pedestrians. “This is really the best that we could do to accommodate that type of traffic,” Nguyen said. 

The area between Seabright Avenue and 7th Avenue is part of a 1.6-mile section of the Coastal Rail Trail that runs from the San Lorenzo River trestle to 17th Avenue in Live Oak, but it won’t be completed until after the Murray Street Bridge project wraps up in 2028. Design for this section began in 2022, and is about 60% complete. It’s partially funded, but there is a large gap in the construction budget because the price of materials has skyrocketed since the project began.

Could the bridge have been constructed in pieces off-site and then installed, thus shortening the time that the bridge would have been closed? 

This isn’t the kind of project that can be fabricated offsite, because the existing foundations of the bridge need to be reinforced. The bridge deck – the part that cars and people drive and walk across – will be replaced, but most of the work is going toward creating strong in-ground support that can resist the next big earthquake, and that can’t be built offsite. In fact, a drill rig and cranes will be placed on top of the existing bridge deck to complete this work. 

“We can’t just remove the old one and put a new one back on top,” said Nguyen. “It’s not a plug-and-play type of bridge.”

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