Quick Take
Matt Machado, the county’s director of community development and infrastructure, is an avid biker who was hit twice by cars in the past five years. He knows Soquel Drive is a challenging spot for accidents and cites data that shows that the road has had “some of the county’s most dangerous conditions for people walking and biking, significant gaps in infrastructure, higher collision rates, and low travel time reliability.” Here, he explains improvements the county is making to ensure a 5.6-mile stretch of the road is safer for bikers, pedestrians and drivers.
Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.
I bike to work almost every day from Aptos to the Santa Cruz County government center in downtown Santa Cruz to benefit my own health, the health of the environment and at times to save myself time. This is all contingent on being able to bike safely, or at least reasonably safe.
My first year of bicycle commuting, I was hit twice.
The hardest hit was on Brommer Street, where someone T-boned me at a driveway, pushing me up into the driveway. Fortunately, I was not injured. The driver of the vehicle didn’t realize there was a bike lane there. The other hit was in Capitola, the car made a last-minute right turn, no signal, and it was a glancing hit in the intersection.
I try to ride roads where there are buffered lanes or very clear striping that indicates a bike lane exists.
After that, I found safer corridors to travel. I believe in the kind of infrastructure we’re working to build for our community. One where getting around, whether walking, biking, taking public transit or driving is safer, easier and accessible for everyone.
If you’ve walked or biked along Soquel Drive during rush hour, you probably know how stressful and even dangerous it can be. I used to avoid biking down Soquel Drive myself and instead took a longer, scenic route through Capitola Village to get to my job at 701 Ocean St. It took 25 minutes or more for me to get to work, but it was the only route that felt safe.
That personal experience reflects a broader public concern, one that deserves recognition. Soquel Drive has long been a challenging major corridor and for too long, it hasn’t felt safe for anyone traveling outside of a vehicle.
Safety isn’t just my story.
The crash report statistics in our county tell a bigger one. According to the latest Santa Cruz County community traffic safety coalition’s 2014-2023 crash report, Santa Cruz County has faced high rates of serious collisions involving people walking and biking. Between 2017 and 2022, we ranked among the top five counties in California for bicyclist injuries and deaths.
What’s especially troubling is the disproportionate impact. People walking and biking make up just 7% of our commuting population, but they account for nearly 30% of all traffic-related deaths and severe injuries.
Every person, whether they’re driving, biking or walking, deserves to feel safe on our roads. It’s a shared network, and safety must be a shared responsibility. That’s why we’ve made targeted safety improvements along 5.6 miles of Soquel Drive through our Soquel Drive Buffered Bike Lane & Traffic Congestion Mitigation Project (Soquel Drive project). These aren’t just projects on a checklist, they’re part of a larger commitment to reduce injuries and save lives.
These improvements along Soquel Drive are part of a data-driven strategy to modernize our infrastructure for multimodal travel. The Soquel Drive corridor is a major east-to-west roadway identified in the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission’s Unified Corridor Investment Study (UCIS). This study found that Soquel Drive had some of the county’s most dangerous conditions for people walking and biking, significant gaps in infrastructure, higher collision rates, and low travel time reliability for all modes of travel.
Building on the UCIS, the Watsonville-Santa Cruz Multimodal Corridor Project (MCP) brought with it a detailed design, environmental review and, the most important thing, funding. It included safety and efficiency upgrades for both Highway 1 and Soquel Drive, which is why you see both projects being worked on simultaneously.
The crosswalks with flashing beacons and, yes, the buffered/protected bike lanes (with the flexible white plastic delineators), as identified in our multimodal corridor planning, are all tools we’re using to create physical space between vehicles and vulnerable pedestrians and bicyclists.
As winter approaches and daylight fades earlier, those white plastic delineators along Soquel Drive will make it easier for drivers to see bike lanes during the evening rush.
Matt Machado is director of Santa Cruz County Community Development & Infrastructure.