Riding my bike on the Santa Cruz levee bike path is making me change my politics – it’s too dangerous here to be green

Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.

I’ve been riding my bike on the Santa Cruz levee bike path for over 20 years. First as a grad student in environmental studies at UCSC, then as adjunct faculty there. Following that, I rode my bike to the sustainability software startup I founded in downtown Santa Cruz. We had four different offices downtown (the first of which was a coffee shop), and I rode my bike to all of them –  rain or shine. 

Most recently, I bike my daughter to classes at the Tannery Arts Center on our electric RadWagon. I love riding bikes. It’s good exercise, it’s healthy to spend time outside, it eliminates carbon emissions that result from driving, and it’s just fun. 

I also love the San Lorenzo River. This all sounds like a great nature, green transportation and exercise story, right?

Except for one thing. In those 20 years, I’ve seen it all on my commutes on the levee bike path: I’ve been pissed on, nearly pushed over multiple times, seen people shooting up heroin, selling drugs, fighting with each other. Bloodied faces, someone banging their head against a tree, people defecating, someone brandishing a gun, prostitution … 

A few  weeks ago someone was shot on the levee path, and I’m lucky I wasn’t there to see it. 

I’ve kept riding through all of this, because of my love of biking, and also because I figured that if I bike, and more people start biking, then our biking infrastructure and our public spaces will slowly get more attention. In other words, I had the idea that it would slowly get better. 

Unfortunately, biking on the levee path is worse now than it’s ever been. 

During COVID and the aftermath of the CZU fire, I felt like there were a lot of people who just needed a place to be. The levee was full of tents and makeshift structures, but I had sympathy and there was a mix of shady characters and people down on their luck. Now, even though there are fewer people loitering on the levee, it’s just full of troublemakers. 

Every time we pass by the bridge from Front Street to San Lorenzo Park – the worst spot on the levee path – my daughter holds her breath and hopes nothing awful happens to us, and that she doesn’t have to witness something disgusting or scary. Most times I have to ring my bell over and over for someone to move out of the way so I can simply pass by. 

Passing under the Highway 1 bridge – just before arriving at the Tannery – we see fewer people milling around so we usually don’t have to slow down. But it feels sketchier because it’s so secluded, and half the time we pass by there is a drug deal going down. My daughter is old enough to ride her bike to school by herself, but I’d never let her ride on the levee path without an adult. 

So I’ve had enough. I’ll get in my car. I’ll use fossil fuel. I’ll pollute and I’ll play it safe. I’ll abandon the river and go to the gym instead. 

I feel my politics changing, my voting preference influenced, my anger growing. I’ve been working on climate change since 2008 in academia, consulting and my startup. I’m proud to say I’ve never commuted by car for school or work – I’ve always been a bike commuter. I’m always pushing my friends to bike more often. 

But why would anyone start biking or walking instead of driving in these circumstances? We can jam huge buildings into downtown Santa Cruz, but we can’t keep our best bike path moderately safe? 

We can invest in widening our freeway, but allow a mass of dangerous people to collect on our clean transport routes to the point of making them unusable? Are we willing to invest in safety only where there are storefronts or parked cars, but not when it’s just bikes and pedestrians?

I’ve seen our city take amazing strides in bike infrastructure in recent years, and there is so much more being planned in rail-trail projects across the county. But if we can’t keep what we already have usable, will we build great new infrastructure that is underutilized because people don’t feel safe?

I guess I wasn’t surprised what friends said when I shared with them that I was writing this piece. One said that she had already stopped biking her kids on the levee years ago during COVID-19. Another thanked me because he walks with his 2-year-old to downtown from Lower Ocean and wishes it felt safer. 

We’ve managed to reduce homelessness in Santa Cruz County in the past year, but our city leaders have work to do to make zero-emissions transportation safe and attractive. 

Jamie Barsimantov has an environmental studies Ph.D. from UC Santa Cruz, is co-founder of SupplyShift, a recently acquired sustainability software startup, and has done climate consulting for the cities of Santa Cruz and Watsonville.