Quick Take:
Measure D funds helped push forward 17 miles of Santa Cruz County road repairs in 2023, which is an increase over previous years. Although this year will likely see only about 5 miles of county roads repaved, some will get improved bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure as well.
Santa Cruz County’s 2016 Measure D sales tax is often associated with funding high-profile projects, including the Coastal Rail Trail and Highway 1 expansion, but it also goes toward the annual maintenance of county roads — and 2023 saw good progress on repairs.
Last week, the county announced that it had repaved about 17 miles of roadway in 2023, mostly funded by Measure D — a 30-year, half-cent sales tax dedicated to funding transportation projects that raises about $17 million annually. The completed roads ranged from Aptos and Watsonville to the Santa Cruz Mountains, and included roads that connect to major arteries such as Highway 9, Green Valley Road and State Park Drive.
“I would say those 17 miles that we saw was a significant increase in the amount of projects that we worked on,” said County Community Development and Infrastructure spokesperson Tiffany Martinez. The county spent over $6 million on the 17 miles of road repairs in 2023.
Martinez said that, since the first slate of Measure D repaving projects began in 2018, the number of miles the county has worked on each year has varied considerably — anywhere from about 5 miles in a year to more than 10. That’s typically dictated by the board of supervisors when it approves the Community Development and Infrastructure Department’s updated five-year expenditure plan, outlining immediate and long-term repairs that the department wants to work on. She added that road conditions and traffic volume factor into which roads are prioritized.
“We consider community impact, too. So what roads are providing access to vital services like schools, hospitals and businesses,” said Martinez. “We also look into whether roads in a specific district provide an emergency route for people and environmental impact, like areas that are prone to flooding.”
Despite the increase in road repairs in 2023, 2024’s outlook features a more modest amount of repairs — just about 5 miles. Martinez said that speaks to the need to creatively finance the road work each year. The county has struggled to fund the massive amounts of storm repairs from the past few years, and this year’s “survival budget” doesn’t help. The county is slated to borrow about $90 million to finance disaster repairs that are both ongoing and already completed. Meanwhile, the City of Santa Cruz has some of its own storm repairs caught in Federal Emergency Management Agency funding limbo as the federal agency temporarily pauses disaster relief.
“We were able to accomplish so much with the 2023 pavement management project because we were able to tie other sources of funding into that,” Martinez said, adding that the work also received about $4 million in state funding and regional grants.
Although 2024’s project list is decidedly smaller than that of last year, Martinez said several major arteries will see repairs and improvements, including additions of bike and pedestrian infrastructure. Both Portola Drive in Capitola and Swanton Road up the coast near Davenport will see repaving and bike-lane enhancements in line with the county’s push to transform more of its well-traveled roads into safer options for cyclists and pedestrians. Martinez said that every road is important, but crews will never be able to realistically get to all of them in a given year.
“We’d like to look at our entire roadway as a priority, and if we had all the money in the world, we would absolutely be working on every single road that needs attention,” she said. “It’s just a matter of what funds can be used in order to repair those roads.”
Latest news
Check out our Carmageddon road delay list here. This week, pay particular attention to:
- Work on the “Whale Bridge” will shut down a single lane of both northbound and southbound Highway 1 lanes overnight from Tuesday through Thursday. The northbound closure will last from 10 p.m. to 5:30 a.m., and the southbound closure will last from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. Travelers will detour at Soquel Drive and rejoin Highway 1 at the 41st Avenue on-ramp.
- Rolling closures of sections of Highway 1 will take place Sunday, Sept. 8, for the biking portion of the Ironman 70.3 Santa Cruz triathlon. Northbound Highway 1 will be closed from Western Drive to Pigeon Point in San Mateo County from 7 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. Southbound Highway 1 will be closed in the same sections from 8:15 a.m. to 11:45 a.m.
- Shoulder work will shut down alternating lanes at various sections of Highway 9 between 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. from Tuesday through Friday. Those sections are between upper Glen Arbor Road and Highway 9, Main Street and Highway 9, Fillmore Avenue and Highway 9, and Hillside Avenue/Miles Street and Mill Street.
- Repaving of a 4-mile stretch of Highway 1 between the Buena Vista Drive bridge in Watsonville and the Rio Del Mar Boulevard bridge in Aptos began July 28. It will cause intermittent overnight single-lane closures of northbound Highway 1 on Sundays from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. and Mondays through Thursdays from 7:30 p.m. to 5 a.m. Overnight single-lane southbound closures will be from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. on Sundays and 8:30 p.m. to 6 a.m. on Mondays through Thursdays.
- Through the end of 2024, various sections of Soquel Drive between State Park Drive and Paul Sweet Road could be reduced to one lane of traffic as the Soquel Drive Buffered Bike Lane and Congestion Mitigation Project moves forward — which includes new bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, adaptive traffic signals, and updated sidewalks and curbs. The sections of road will be intermittently closed as work continues at multiple sites. Specifically, look out for intermittent single lane closures between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.
Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.