Carmageddon: Santa Cruz road safety plan targets dangerous speeds, Mission Street crashes

Santa Cruz’s Transportation and Public Works Commission is set to review the city’s road safety action plan at its Monday meeting, and to recommend that the city council adopt it.

Casualties on city roads remain a significant issue. According to a staff report, there were 16 deaths and 94 serious injuries in crashes on city roads between 2020 and 2024. To try to achieve the goal of zero traffic deaths on city roads, the road safety action plan involves reviewing past plans, analyzing past crashes and risks, and an overview of public input. 

The plan finds that two-thirds of fatalities and serious injury crashes involve someone walking or biking, and that the main factors in fatal and serious injury crashes are unsafe speeds, pedestrian violations and drugs or alcohol. The plan also singles out one of the city’s main corridors, Mission Street, as a key area of concern. One in 10 crashes between 2020 and 2024 happened on Mission Street, and 47% of those involved a cyclist or pedestrian.

The recommendations include new policies, programs and strategies to address these areas of concern, and also includes engineering recommendations to improve safety on other high-risk roads including Ocean, Laurel and Water streets. The plan recommends that next steps should be bringing speed limits down on corridors with limits of 30 mph and in school zones, and forming a road safety task force made up of city police, fire, public works personnel and more to track and discuss the plan implementation.

Other steps forward include advocating for improvements on Mission Street with state transit agency Caltrans, and continuing to implement already-funded projects such as flashing beacons and intersections throughout the city, separated bike lanes on Water Street, better striping on Laurel Street, completing Front Street and downtown intersection improvements, and Bay Street corridor changes.

The plan also recommends seeking safety funding for high-injury and high-risk roads — specifically, where the most collisions occur and where they are most likely to occur.

Another priority project involves adding “rest-in-red” and “leading pedestrian interval” signals to high-risk and high-injury roads. Rest-in-red means that drivers would get a red light when approaching a signal at night, forcing speed reductions; leading pedestrian interval timing gives pedestrians a few-second head start so that they are more visible to drivers.

The plan relates back to previous commitments to improve local roadway safety. In 2019, the city adopted a “Vision Zero” resolution that aims to completely end traffic fatalities and serious injuries on the city’s streets by 2030. Two years later, the city completed a local road safety plan that laid out the things that the city could do to improve roadway safety. That made the city eligible for grants to fund safety projects, with the condition that the plan needs to be updated every five years. 

In 2023, the city secured funding through the federal Safe Streets and Roads for All program to form the safety action plan in consideration on Monday. The plan would replace the previously developed local roadway safety plan.

View the draft plan here. Monday’s commission meeting begins at 6 p.m. in the city council chambers at 809 Center St.

Latest news

Here’s what’s happening this week on our roadways:

• Tree work and drainage 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 Twin Gates and San Lorenzo Avenue, California Drive/Middle Road and Pike Road, Ramona Drive and Stapp Road, and Tin Can Ranch Road and Highway 35, Waterman Gap Junction and the Highway 236 junction.

• Tree work is shutting down northbound Crescent Drive and northbound West Vine Hill Road in Scotts Valley from Monday through Friday between 9:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.

• The southbound Highway 1 off-ramp at Bay Avenue in Capitola is scheduled to be closed for approximately four months as crews reconstruct the ramp as part of the bus-on-shoulder facility. The closure began on Aug. 2.

• 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.

• Roadway excavation is shutting down the southbound Highway 1 on-ramp at Park Avenue in Capitola until 7 a.m. Wednesday.

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