Quick Take
Before Phase 2 of Reimagine Metro is implemented in September, the final changes included in Phase 1 plans will go into effect in mid-June. Here’s what that will look like for Santa Cruz County’s transit agency.
Santa Cruz Metro has already seen major changes to its service in 2024, and more are on the horizon.
Late last year, Metro began rolling out sweeping changes to its service with the goal of adding more direct, frequent service, better transfers and no additional fares to increase ridership from 3.5 million to 8 million annually — all part of a three-year pilot project the agency has named Reimagine Metro.
The first changes, referred to as Phase 1, mostly involved route adjustments, including a new route connecting the UC Santa Cruz campus to Live Oak, buses every 10 to 20 minutes at Cabrillo College on both northbound and southbound routes traveling Highway 1. Those went into effect in late December 2023. Before Phase 2 is fully implemented in September, the remaining components of Phase 1 will go into effect next month.
Santa Cruz Metro Planning and Development Director John Urgo said those changes include:
- Service every 15 minutes rather than every 30 minutes on Route 1, which runs between downtown Santa Cruz to Watsonville along Soquel Drive.
- Highway 17 service every 30 minutes in peak periods, which are the hours between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. as well as 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. That route currently sees service only every hour all day.
- Service every 30 minutes on weekdays and service every hour for Route 90X, which runs between Santa Cruz and Watsonville on Highway 1. That route currently sees service only every hour or more each day.
The Phase 1 changes are most impactful, says Urgo, as the June tweaks and the prior December 2023 changes involve Metro introducing route adjustments and major frequency increases, whereas September’s phase 2 largely expands on them.
“There’s a 20% service increase coming in June, and another 20% in September,” he told Lookout. “And for the first time ever, I think, there will be a route every 30 minutes between Santa Cruz and Watsonville.”
Urgo said that over the 18 months of working toward implementing Reimagine Metro changes, public input kept circling back to frequency as a major priority.
“We did a survey at the very beginning of the project, and across the three rounds of outreach we did, around 70% of people told us they wanted more frequent service over expanding service to new areas,” he said. “And 30% of non-riders told us they would ride Metro more if the service came more often.”
Urgo added that the Reimagine Metro changes in effect have been successful thus far, as the agency has seen ridership increase 23% in just the first full quarter of the year — and the hope is that trend will continue or even improve further with the frequency increases.
“Usually when you do a major service change, ridership stays flat or goes down, because it takes people time to adjust to it and get used to it,” he said. “But we saw that boost pretty much right away. We’ll see if that continues, but it shows we’re moving in the right direction.”
Latest news
Check out our Carmageddon road delay list here. Pay particular attention to:
The Pure Water Soquel water purification project continues to move forward, and its current work will affect parts of Laurel Street in Santa Cruz. The installation of an architectural cover for the piping along the Laurel Street bridge will continue this week between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m., shutting down one lane of eastbound Laurel Street.
Crews pouring concrete will shut down the onramp at northbound 41st Avenue and northbound Highway 1 between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. from Monday through Thursday. It will also shut down the onramp at southbound Soquel Drive and southbound Highway 1 between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. from Monday through Thursday.
Drainage work and slope repair will cause one-lane traffic control on various sections of Highway 9 from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. In these stretches, there will be one lane open with a traffic light controlling the flow of traffic in both directions. Those areas are the sections between Camp Sycamore Road and the Paradise Park exit, California Drive/Middle Road and Alba Road, and Western Avenue and River Street.
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