Quick Take
Soquel Drive is a critical bike corridor connecting Mid-County communities, but its protected bike lanes have deteriorated as safety bollards have been damaged and removed, write Mikey Cohen, board chair of Bike Santa Cruz County, and transportation activist Jack Brown. They say the current design no longer provides reliable protection and can even create hazards for cyclists and drivers. They call on Santa Cruz County leaders to invest in more durable bike lane barriers, traffic-calming measures and ongoing maintenance. They believe improving Soquel Drive would create a safer, more practical transportation corridor for riders of all ages and experience levels.
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Soquel Drive is currently the only direct bike corridor connecting Santa Cruz, Live Oak, Soquel, Capitola and Aptos. For thousands of residents, it is the spine of daily, car-free travel. We should celebrate that the county has taken meaningful steps to improve safety, including installing protected bike lanes.
But, although the corridor was designed to provide protected space for cyclists, that protection has steadily eroded.
(The corridor is Soquel Avenue from downtown Santa Cruz to the Highway 1 overcrossing in Live Oak, Soquel Drive from there to its end in Aptos; we’ll refer to it throughout this piece as Soquel or Soquel Drive.)
The promise of protected bike lanes is clear. According to the National Association of City Transportation Officials, converting a conventional bike lane into a protected bike lane can reduce crashes between motorists and cyclists by more than 50%. This is a significant life-saving infrastructure safety improvement.
The goal is not just to encourage more people to ride; it’s to ensure they arrive safely.
Bike Santa Cruz County survey data show that fast traffic, unprotected lanes and unmaintained bike lanes are the three major factors that prevent people from biking more and feeling safe on the road.
On Soquel, the protection today relies on flexible plastic delineators, bollards intended to create a visual and physical buffer. Since installation, the number of these delineators has steadily decreased by nearly 75% as they’ve been struck, broken or removed, from what was initially over 1,000 delineators to less than 300 today. Nearly every delineator that was installed shows signs of contact with automobiles.
The result is a corridor that looks protected in theory, but has rapidly declined to unprotected in practice.
Worse, the current setup introduces hazards of its own. Damaged or missing bollards create confusion for drivers and cyclists alike. Debris from broken posts ends up in bike lanes and maintenance is a constant, resource-intensive cycle for county public works crews. When protection is inconsistent, riders are left guessing where they are truly safe.
We can do better, and we don’t need to start from scratch.
The next step is to upgrade from paint-and-post designs to more durable, thoughtfully designed separation. That could include low-profile curbing integrated into the lane separators – enough to clearly define the bike space without creating dangerous obstacles. The goal is visibility and predictability, something that stands out from the road surface and signals to drivers that the space is not theirs to enter. Physical separation also works best alongside traffic-calming measures that reduce vehicle speeds and narrow the psychological width of the roadway.
That’s why we’re calling for a data-driven approach.
Public works should pilot different separation treatments in the highest-conflict areas along Soquel Drive, testing how they perform under real-world conditions. Delineators will get hit; that’s inevitable. What matters is a bike lane that holds up well, can quickly be maintained and provides meaningful protection over time.
Soquel Drive should be a flagship corridor for safe, connected biking in our county. Getting it right means giving people a great alternative transportation solution and reducing injuries. Right now, it is the primary direct spine for practical cross-county bicycle travel and for the foreseeable future, it will remain so at least until the coastal corridor is fully realized from Watsonville to Davenport.
We cannot afford a “good enough” solution on the one corridor people rely on today.
We are calling on the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors and the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission to prioritize funding for durable, well-designed bike lane protection and ongoing maintenance along Soquel Drive. This is a relatively modest investment compared to the cost of serious injuries, emergency response and lost public confidence in our infrastructure.
We celebrate that the county has shown leadership by building the lane and now it must show follow-through by making it work. Despite its shortcomings, the corridor is already changing how people move through Mid-County. More riders are using Soquel because, for the first time, many people feel they have some level of protection.
A truly protected corridor should feel safe not just for experienced commuters, but for teenagers, older adults and people riding for everyday transportation. It should be intuitive, consistent and resilient. It should invite more people onto bikes and not leave them wondering whether the protection will disappear a block ahead.
Soquel Drive has the potential to be exactly that: a model for what safe, practical, everyday biking can look like in Santa Cruz County.
Let’s finish the job.
Mikey Cohen is the board chair of Bike Santa Cruz County.
Jack Brown is an information technology program manager in the transportation industry who lives in Aptos. He is the founder and executive director of the Santa Cruz Coastal Trail Conservancy and a regular Soquel bike commuter.