Quick Take
Brooke Secor lives close to West Cliff Drive and will likely see traffic increase on her block where her kids play if the City of Santa Cruz chooses to make the iconic street a one-way road. But, after attending community meetings and reviewing the city’s vision plan, she is convinced a one-way is the best alternative. To get others to agree, she says, the city will have to work to regain the community trust it lost in 2023, when it made poor diversion choices after the storms washed away part of the road.
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Most of us in Santa Cruz share a common goal – to protect our community’s access to the coastline, which is the crown jewel of our town. But we also have to accept a hard fact: The ocean is rising and we will be forced to make tough community choices, particularly on West Cliff Drive.
We must not continue to prioritize vehicular access at the expense of our beaches and shoreline. We must fulfill our obligation to reduce climate change impacts and ensure the safety of people walking and biking.
That means converting West Cliff Drive into a one-way street.
I live on the Lower Westside, between Delaware Avenue and West Cliff Drive in what the city’s recently released 50-year vision plan for West Cliff Drive calls the “impacted neighbors zone.” It would be in my best interest to keep traffic on West Cliff and away from my block, where our children play.
And yet, I understand that converting this road to one-way traffic is essential to preserving access on West Cliff Drive for most users, even though it might result in more local traffic on the street where I live.
Converting the road to one-way gives us a much-needed buffer for when the ocean inevitably claims more of the pathway. It also allows the city the flexibility to move the pedestrian path inland as needed without major disruptions to neighborhood circulation. Critically, it will also reduce the overall traffic of heavy pickups, motorcycles and other souped-up vehicles that cruise back and forth on West Cliff Drive. This means less noise impact in the Lower Westside neighborhood.
Fewer cruisers also means lowered emissions. Finally, reducing lane widths and space for vehicles will result in slower vehicle speeds and a safer West Cliff Drive for all.
The city lost the trust of many of us in January 2023, when the storms tore into the roads and forced closure. The city routed traffic in ways that baffled and angered many of us. I have found myself part of many community conversations, petitions and neighborhood discussions and one thing both one-way and two-way supporters agree on is that we are all still frustrated at the decisions the city made, the lack of transparency in detours and mitigating impacts, and the overall poor communication about the process.
In addition to its proximity to the ocean, the Lower Westside is an appealing neighborhood because its streets are laid out in a grid. This might not seem like much, but by design, it provides a variety of route options to naturally disperse traffic throughout the neighborhood. We all know the shortest, most direct routes between our destinations.
When the city chose to make traffic the next block’s problem by closing Oxford Way at Bethany Curve, and then later Alta Avenue, in response to resident complaints, this reduced route options, decreased neighborhood connectivity and paraded West Cliff traffic around the entire neighborhood up Almar Avenue, across Delaware Avenue and down Woodrow Avenue to Pelton Avenue. This route maximized the detour’s impact on Lower Westside residents by creating a bottleneck of vehicles instead of spreading traffic among the usual five avenues that should be open from West Cliff Drive to Delaware Avenue at Woodrow.
Had the city not prioritized and politicized a few residents’ inconveniences and closed Oxford Avenue and Alta Avenue, it would have kept traffic closest to West Cliff and the intended destination. Routing West Cliff Drive traffic along Oxford Way to David Way and back to West Cliff would have directly impacted 34 homes. Conversely, the city’s official detour route up Woodrow, across Delaware and down Almar directly impacted 107 homes, plus all the other Lower Westside residents who use those streets.
Ironically, the city’s detour also concentrated vehicular traffic onto a Safe Routes to School and designated city bike route (Delaware Avenue), putting Lower Westside cyclists and pedestrians at greater risk.
Those past choices are fueling the community’s outrage against the proposed one-way pilot and have caused the public to lose trust in the city’s ability to effectively implement the pilot. It’s too bad because we continue to throw money at a road that at least partially belongs to the ocean.
I attended Santa Cruz City Council meetings in April and listened to influential neighbors and community icons urge the city council to vote against the proposed two-year pilot program temporarily turning West Cliff into a one-way road. I understand the frustration.
The seemingly haphazard planning of the past year has eroded the public’s trust in the city to make good decisions. It’s not because we don’t have good city employees – we have great ones, but they were forced to respond to complaints about increased traffic on neighborhood streets impacted by the closure of West Cliff Drive, and no solution is going to feel 100% good to everyone.
To overcome this mistrust, the city must commit to an inclusive, transparent planning process that mitigates the potential impacts to the neighborhood from one-way West Cliff.
The goal must be to route traffic intelligently, in an equitable manner, to reduce impacts on the majority of Westside residents and, most important, to prioritize traffic calming and safety for people walking and biking. I hope the city’s failure to advance the one-way pilot does not mean that planning for a future one-way West Cliff is dead.
That would be a mistake. Rather, the city must use this break between storms to plan for the future and work with residents to devise a plan to address traffic routing and reduce traffic impacts to the Lower Westside neighbors. Without this, we will again be caught flat-footed when the ocean inevitably claims another chunk of cliff.
The current configuration of West Cliff might have worked well for the past several decades, but it will not survive a rising ocean with climate change-fueled storms. The future of West Cliff is not just about what might benefit us today. This is about planning for the future and making decisions that will preserve what we have for the next generation. A desire to continue our driving rituals and hold onto nostalgia is not a good enough reason to refuse to see the truth of coastal erosion on our doorstep.
Vision Zero, 2016’s Measure D and Ecology Action’s work with the city to establish and improve safe, active transportation in the neighborhood will be adversely impacted if we insist on returning West Cliff Drive to its previous function. It will improve our community and quality of life if we spend less time and dedicate less space to prioritize single-occupancy vehicles.
No amount of electric cars will change this truth, and it will be necessary for managing our increasing population and density. We don’t need to sacrifice our beautiful coastline to accommodate cars.
Go walk along West Cliff today. There is no going back to the way it was.
Lower Westside resident Brooke Secor has two children, works for two locally owned businesses and serves on the board for two local nonprofits. Rooted in Santa Cruz, she prioritizes engaging neighbors to build a stronger, safer and healthier community for all.