West Cliff: Postponing the inevitable?

One way or ... no way? There's a time-honored tradition in Santa Cruz politics and policy making: Listen to the neighborhoods.

So the Santa Cruz City Council did just that in postponing a pilot project that would have made storm-damaged West Cliff Drive one way for a twoyear period. The pilot program would have used a state grant for a plan for one-way vehicle access with dedicated bike and pedestrian lanes and neighborhood traffic calming.

Many residents in the Westside neighborhoods closest to the coast, and to the roadway and biking/pedestrian path running oceanside from Bay Street to Swanton Boulevard alongside Natural Bridges State Park, hated the idea of making West Cliff one way.

Last Tuesday, the Council adopted the 50 Year Community Vision for West Cliff, but after listening to testimony from residents against the one-way plan, along with proponents' arguments, decided discretion was the better part of valor and punted the pilot program into the future.

As District 3 (which includes much of the Westside) City Councilmember Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson, told the Sentinel Editorial Board on Thursday, there were “a lot of unanswered questions” and she, with District 6 (also Westside) Councilmember Renee Golder, helped put forward a “compromise” of not committing to the pilot plan, while still allowing other aspects of the overall Vision for improving West Cliff to move forward and directing city staff to return by year's end with a “definitive” (revised?) plan.

Many residents in Westside neighborhoods said they had not been properly advised about the program, part of a process ordered by the council after the 2022-23 storms damaged West Cliff. After that the plan was put together in a series of meetings, including a final public meeting in February.

Proponents, including the local bicycle community, said that creating a dedicated bike lane alongside the recreational trail (a harbinger of the railtrail debate?) would provide numerous benefits including enhanced safety along the always-popular coastal pathway.

As Stephen Svete and Amelia Conlen of Bike Santa Cruz County wrote for the Sentinel in a Guest Commentary, “West Cliff Drive functions primarily as a recreation corridor — and is being loved to death ... (with a) user volume that far exceeds its design capacity . ... Today, it handles a near-constant parade of wheelchairs, skateboards, scooters and strollers — as well as joggers, cyclists and e-bikers.”

But critics said that the oneway proposal was put together by city officials and outside interest groups without council approval. As local activist Gillian Greensite wrote in a recent Letter to the Editor, “Meanwhile the poor suckers whose streets and quality of life will be dramatically changed for the worse never heard a word about any (council meeting to consider the plan)” until a few days or so before the vote.

One objection was that traffic would spill onto side streets and make access to areas such as surf spots and Lighthouse Field difficult since drivers would often have to reroute around West Cliff if they did not find parking on a first pass.

So why did this not create significant neighborhood problems along the Pleasure Point section of East Cliff Drive, which became one-way in 1995 as part of many years of armoring projects to combat coastal erosion.

But while that section of East Cliff is popular among surfers, bike riders, pedestrians and skaters, at less than a half mile long it's not nearly as long as the 2.5-mile span of West Cliff that would have been temporarily closed to two-way traffic.

Neighborhoods in the unincorporated Pleasure Point area, once considered a funky “surf ghetto,” have not historically been as organized as Westside Santa Cruz. And the spillover from the Beach Boardwalk and other tourist attractions makes West Cliff far more popular among tourists and locals.

But it's an open question whether postponing any oneway designation for West Cliff will withstand the ravages of climate change and future storms, much less the everhigher tide of visitors and recreational users.