Quick Take
Construction on the Murray Street Bridge has disrupted traffic and strained nearby businesses, but Santa Cruz officials say the three-year timeline can’t be shortened, in part because of strict environmental regulations. With multiple agencies overseeing wildlife protections and utility work that must be timed around seasonal constraints, the complex project remains on schedule heading into next summer.
Over the past six months, construction on the Murray Street Bridge has rerouted traffic across Santa Cruz, plunged business owners on both sides of the harbor into precarious economic conditions and ignited a flurry of finger-pointing and attempted political band-aids aimed at softening the blow of the multiyear project.
One of the main points of contention from the public: Is there any way the three-year timeline – which stretches from late March of this year through January 2028 – could be shortened?
No, said Kevin Crossley, an engineer with the city’s public works team. The city determined the number of working days in advance – in this case, 750 – before it reached out for bids. It received two bids, and eventually chose Shimmick Construction, a Bay Area-based company that specializes in complex infrastructure projects. “You can’t propose a different schedule as part of a bid for a project like this,” Crossley said. “You have to bid off of the schedule that’s laid out in the contract documents.”
The seemingly long timeline isn’t the result of government blunders or mismanagement, as some critics have alleged. But blame could be laid on steelhead trout.
“Those are the ones that really affect our project schedule, because they have a migration season in and out of the harbor and up into Arana Creek,” said Crossley. The fish’s presence in the waterway from mid-October, when they migrate upstream to spawn, to mid-June, when they typically return to the sea, leaves a narrow window over the summer to complete pile-driving in the water. Because the steel piles are crucial infrastructure for the rest of the bridge, it affected the entire roadmap of work.
Crossley described the Murray Street Bridge as “the most complex” project he’s worked on in his 13 years with the city because of the number of permits issued by overlapping environmental agencies, including U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the National Marine Fisheries Service, in addition to oversight by the U.S. Coast Guard to ensure that humans also have safe passage in the harbor. “It’s got a convergence of both the environmental and recreational user requirements – a combination of all the things you expect on a street, and all the things in the harbor,” he said.
The pile-driving schedule, determined by the steelhead migration, in turn set the order of operations for the rest of the project. Crews had to work with Pacific Gas & Electric to remove electrical lines running along the bridge before pile-driving could begin, and a new column had to be installed on the north side of the bridge to support a sewer pipeline that will be transferred this spring. The line can’t be moved during the winter, because the flow of water is highest and most difficult to manage.
“We can’t do that work until next spring. So our goal is to get everything ready to go so that in May of next year,” Crossley said. “We can move the sewer line out of the way, and that opens up next summer season for pile-driving.”
The trout aren’t the only harbor residents affecting construction. Marine mammals, such as sea lions, seals and otters, and nesting birds can also stop work. Work must halt if a marine animal comes within 10 meters of the work zone. Four biological monitors are on site at all times to make sure crews comply. If nesting birds or bats are found, the project has to either adjust the work zone away from the nest or stop until the fledglings fly away.
But so far, those haven’t had a major impact. Public works expected to lose 16 hours per month due to animal stoppages, but so far has lost less than two hours, said Crossley. Biologists swept the area for heron, hawk, owl and egret nests, and all were outside of the work zone. They did find a couple of songbird and hummingbird nests, Crossley said, but they were able to work around them.
The city also monitors the acoustic levels underwater from construction. To protect harbor animals from the thumping of steel piles into the harbor floor, it encircles the driver with a bubble curtain – basically, a wall of bubbles – to break up the sound waves. Biologists also conduct a daily pelican check to make sure there are none nearby.
Despite the complexity – and the frustration felt by city residents – the project is on schedule, said Crossley. “We’re very pleased with the amount of progress we’ve accomplished this year,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of luck and success so far, and we’re hoping to carry that through next summer.”
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