Quick Take
Santa Cruz County has begun its annual road maintenance program, aiming to repair and rehabilitate roads before the winter, while also conducting drain maintenance and vegetation management to prevent flooding and further road damage. The work is split into three phases, and will last until the fall.
Santa Cruz County is a few weeks into its annual road maintenance program, which spans the entire county and includes both urban and rural roads.
Each year, the county takes time throughout the spring, summer and fall to get local roads into the best shape possible for the winter season, when wet, stormy weather often hampers or entirely prevents the ability to do roadwork.
County Community Development and Infrastructure spokesperson Tiffany Martinez said that the work includes a myriad of different things, including cutting overgrown vegetation, drainage maintenance and repaving. The two former components are important to finish up before the winter, she said, to minimize the likelihood of flooding and pavement damage during wet weather stretches.
“We’re not just repairing storm-damaged or collapsed roads, we’re trying our best to maintain the roads that we have to prevent those collapses, erosion and all of the things you see during winter storms,” she said.
Road crews are starting in Mid-County, where maintenance work began on April 21 and will continue through June 20, barring unforeseen delays. The roads being worked on as of Monday are Branciforte Drive between Branciforte Ridge and Treehouse Way and Happy Valley Road between Branciforte Drive and the Conservancy Loop area.
Coming up, Jarvis Road from Vine Hill Road to Hall Ranch Drive will be undergoing maintenance from May 19 through May 23, and work on Laurel Road between Highway 17 and the Laurel Road loop near Redtail Ridge is scheduled between May 26 and June 3.
Crews will work from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on weekdays, and drivers should expect minor impacts — likely limited to single-lane closures during these time periods.
In June, a short section of Schulties Road near Redwood Lodge Road will be undergoing maintenance on June 4 and 5, the majority of Morrell Road between Soquel San Jose Road and Summit Road will be under repair from June 6 through June 11, and Stetson Road between Soquel San Jose Road and Skyland Road will be undergoing maintenance from June 12 through 20.
After completing the Mid-County roads, crews will shift up to North County, though the county has not yet announced which roads will be worked on. North County work is expected to run from late June into August. Then, workers will set their sights on South County, but similarly, the county has not yet announced which roads will undergo maintenance. Repairs are slated to begin in August and run into the fall, but Martinez said that a hard timeline for the South County work is not clear, because it will depend on whether repairs in North and Mid-County stick to their current timelines.
While the work happens every year, Martinez said that the recent years of intense, stormy winters have emphasized the importance of the annual program.
“These atmospheric river storms seem to come yearly now, when before it was maybe every couple of years,” she said, adding that, if the county can secure additional funding in the future, it could expand the program. The work is currently funded by the Highway Users Tax Account, otherwise known as the “gas tax.”
“We really need additional funding to not just maintain our roads, but to also rebuild them with these concurrent years of atmospheric river storms,” Martinez said.
Latest news
Check out our Carmageddon road project list here. This week, pay particular attention to:
- The Highway 1 off-ramps at Park Avenue will be closed for months as part of the Highway 1 expansion project. The southbound off-ramp will be closed for six months after shutting April 17. The northbound off-ramp was closed April 7 and will stay closed for four months.
- The two rightmost lanes on southbound Highway 1 between Soquel Drive and Bay Avenue/Porter Street will be closed overnight on Sunday and Monday from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. At the same time, there will be alternating closures of the 41st Avenue and Soquel Drive off-ramps.
- The Highway 1 off-ramp at Soquel Avenue will be intermittently closed from Monday through Friday between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. Travelers should expect delays of up to 10 minutes.
- The installation of the Newell Creek Pipeline on Graham Hill Road between Summit Avenue and Lockewood Lane will take place on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and could cause delays of up to five minutes.
- Sections of Soquel Avenue, Seabright Avenue and Water Street will be closed on weekdays from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. through May 16 in order for crews to install fiber optic cables for new traffic signals. Those sections are on Soquel Avenue from Seabright Avenue to La Fonda Avenue, Seabright Avenue from Water Street to Soquel Avenue, and Water Street from North Pacific Avenue to Seabright Avenue.
- There will be overnight single-lane closures of Soquel Drive between La Fonda Avenue and State Park Drive from Tuesday through July 1 for repaving and striping along the road. The closures will take place between 7:30 p.m. and 5:30 a.m. from Sundays through Thursdays.
- Tree work, drainage work and utility work will close down sections of Highway 9 from Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Those sections are between the Kings Creek Bridge and the San Lorenzo River Bridge, Henry Cowell Redwoods Vista Point and Glengarry Road, Arboleda Way and Scenic Drive, Prospect Avenue and Lorenzo Avenue, and Watermans Gap Junction and Tin Can Ranch Road.
- In Watsonville, a single lane on Green Valley Road from Holohan Road to Casserly Road is closed for the Multi-Use Trail Improvement Project. Lane closures occur from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. Additionally, a single lane is closed on Buena Vista Drive and Ranport Road for overhead tree trimming on weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., causing potential delays.
- Road maintenance on Mountain Charlie Road in Los Gatos will take up most of the road between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. from Monday through Sunday. Travelers should expect limited or no pass-through in active work zones.
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