Quick Take
At a special meeting Thursday, the Capitola City Council will weigh a pair of options for the Coastal Rail Trail along Park Avenue between Capitola Village and the Cliffwood Heights neighborhood.
A special meeting of the Capitola City Council on Thursday will likely decide the fate of the Coastal Rail Trail’s route through Capitola Village, after the council delayed a vote on the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission’s vision for the project in mid-February.
The RTC had asked the city council to approve plans that envisioned the trail diverging from the rail line in the Park Avenue area of Capitola. The trail was originally planned for the coastal side of the rail line, but RTC and county staff said that constructing a separated multi-use path next to the road would be cheaper.
County staff also said that running the trail adjacent to Park Avenue would provide a multitude of benefits beyond costing less, including better connectivity between Capitola Village and the Cliffwood Heights neighborhood, better ocean views and fewer long-term impacts to monarch butterfly habitats. County planner Rob Tidmore told a crowd of more than 100 at a Capitola town hall in early April that the Park Avenue option would also prevent conflict with properties that encroach onto the rail corridor, and is farther away from the eroding cliffside.
Moving the trail onto city streets and sidewalks through Capitola was a main point of Measure L, a 2018 city ballot initiative that aimed to keep the city from diverting the trail off of the trestle bridge through Capitola Village. It passed with 52% of the vote, and councilmembers will likely discuss if and how the measure applies in this case.
The Park Avenue option can be constructed in two ways. While both include a 6-inch curb and a 3-foot buffer, one preserves the existing on-street bike lane, allowing cyclists to use either trail or the on-street bike lane, while the other eliminates the existing bike lane, leaving only the new trail.
If the Capitola City Council approves one of the Park Avenue options, county staff will ask the board of supervisors to approve further environmental work and request funding for environmental review from the RTC at its May meeting. The project team would then conduct the environmental work over the summer and come back to the city council for full approval of Segments 10 and 11, which run from 17th Avenue in Live Oak to State Park Drive in Aptos.
A failure to approve the Park Avenue option complicates the project. County and RTC staff would go back to the RTC and request support for the original coastal alignment, even though it comes with higher construction costs and more challenges. It’s possible that the project team would consider dropping the entire 0.7-mile stretch of trail between Monterey Avenue and Coronado Street, but Tidmore previously warned that the California Transportation Commission could see that as lowering the public benefit of the project and pull some of the funding. He said he didn’t know how much grant funding could ultimately be lost.
The motion to delay the vote passed 3-1, with only Councilmember Melinda Orbach voting against the delay. Vice Mayor Alexander Pedersen abstained from the vote because his home is close to the project.
The meeting to vote on the project is scheduled for Thursday at 5:15 p.m.
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 starting Thursday. The northbound off-ramp was shut April 7 and will stay closed for four months.
- Striping work will cause overnight closures of northbound and southbound Highway 1 between Bay Avenue and State Park Drive from Sunday through Friday between 9 p.m. and 6:30 a.m.
- Construction along Soquel Drive from La Fonda Avenue to State Park Drive began on Sunday and is scheduled to continue through the end of the month. Work will take place from Sunday through Thursday between 7:30 p.m. and 5:30 a.m. Traffic may be reduced to one lane during these times.
- Sections of Soquel Avenue, Seabright Avenue and Water Street will be closed on weekdays from 8:30 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 N. Pacific Avenue to Seabright Avenue.
- 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 Henry Cowell Redwoods Vista Point and Glengarry Road, California Drive/Middle Road and Irwin Way, and Prospect Avenue and Lorenzo Avenue.
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