Quick Take
Residents of Santa Cruz County’s mountain communities got updates on ongoing extensive safety improvements along the Highway 9 corridor, including improved sidewalks and bicycle facilities for everyone in the area, but more specifically San Lorenzo Valley students.
Improved sidewalks and bicycle facilities in Santa Cruz County’s mountain communities are nearing the home stretch as Caltrans aims to wrap up a long-running project by late summer 2027.
The project, often called the “sidewalk project,” involves roughly a mile of Highway 9 between Felton and the San Lorenzo Valley schools complex and will add pedestrian and bicycle safety features along the highway, a main artery for most of the towns in the San Lorenzo Valley. There will be 4- to 6-foot wide sidewalks along the highway, extending from Graham Hill Road to the complex that houses San Lorenzo Valley Elementary, San Lorenzo Valley Middle and San Lorenzo Valley High, along with three new retaining walls. It also includes new Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant curb ramps and gutter upgrades and a new bus pad at San Lorenzo Valley High.
“While this project is for all of us in Felton, to be honest, it was really designed to make sure that our kids can get to and from school safely from downtown Felton,” said District 5 County Supervisor Monica Martinez, adding that there have been a number of serious accidents in the corridor. “It’s a project that’s very, very important to me.”
Caltrans project manager Matt Welker said the project has been many years in the making and has required collaboration among the state transit agency, the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission (RTC), San Lorenzo Valley Unified School District and the District 5 supervisor’s office. Planning began in 2019 after years of discussion and a 2013 bus ride with then-supervisor Bruce McPherson. In 2022, the project and its environmental review were approved. Design wrapped up in 2025, and construction began this July. It is expected to be completed in August 2027.
Welker said public engagement made clear that while residents wanted safe options for kids and families to walk and bike, they also wanted to maintain Felton’s rural vibe. The project team decided to give the retaining walls a natural, textured appearance rather than use standard concrete, as one way to maintain that feel. He added that bikes will have a continuous shoulder of at least 4 feet wide. The sidewalks vary between 4 and 6 feet wide because of geological constraints, said Welker.
Caltrans is working on other projects in the mountain areas, too, including replacing bridges over the San Lorenzo River and Kings Creek near Boulder Creek, along with repaving on upper Highway 9. Repaving on lower Highway 9 and a fish passage project at Waterman Gap are still in the pipeline, Welker said.
“These are projects that are the result of years of planning and years of engagement, both with our partners and the folks here tonight, with the end goal of improving Highway 9,” he said.
Welker also acknowledged the approaching winter, which has the potential to be a rough one, and said that if medium- or large-scale emergencies occur during construction, Caltrans is unlikely to be able to manage the impact by itself.
“Those situations may lead to highway closures or around-the-clock one-way traffic control,” he said. “Regardless of the scale, our public information office will continue to spread awareness, and we will be an active participant in the county’s emergency operations meetings as well.”
RTC Executive Director Sarah Christensen connected the work to other major efforts moving forward in the area, including the Felton and Boulder Creek Complete Streets projects, which seek to improve downtown Felton and Boulder Creek’s road networks: “It’s going to be really transformative in a good way.”
Latest news
Here’s what’s happening this week on our roadways:
- Utility and shoulder work is shutting down one lane in various sections of Highway 9 from Monday through Friday between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. Those sections are between Riverdale Park and Monaco Lane, Mitchell Drive and Sylvan Avenue, Ramona Drive and Stapp Road, and Cresta Drive and Monaco Lane.
- The southbound Highway 1 off-ramp at Bay Avenue in Capitola is in the third month of a four-month closure that began Aug. 2, as crews reconstruct the ramp as part of the bus-on-shoulder facility.
- Roadway excavation is shutting down the southbound Highway 1 on-ramp at Park Avenue in Capitola until Nov. 19.
- Bridge work is currently shutting down alternating lanes of Highway 9 between Pool Drive and Old County Highway and Riverdale Park and Monaco Lane until April 30, 2027.
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