


While the public comment period on the near future of West Cliff Drive remains open, and a definitive plan won’t come to a Santa Cruz City Council with two new members for a few months, the city of Santa Cruz has come up with a list of priorities on shoring up the storm damaged ocean-front roadway for the next five years.
But, like all fixes to infrastructure prone to the ocean’s ever-rapacious appetite for eroding man-made structures, none of these will stave off what seems inevitable.
And none of the priorities involve converting a long stretch of West Cliff to one-way traffic. As it stands, by next spring the road will be fully open to two-way traffic for the next five years – with the caveat that future storm damages might render this plan inoperable.
You might remember that last April (2024), the City Council essentially conceded to the time-honored tradition in Santa Cruz politics and policy making: Listen to the neighborhoods, which members did in postponing a pilot project that would have made West Cliff one way for a two-year period. The pilot program would have used a state grant for a plan with dedicated bike and pedestrian lanes and neighborhood traffic calming running oceanside from Bay Street to Swanton Boulevard.
But many residents in the Westside neighborhoods closest to the coast, already impacted by traffic rerouting from closed sections of the oceanside roadway, hated the idea of making West Cliff one way. After listening to testimony, council members decided discretion was the better part of valor and punted the pilot program into the future, even as the city’s “50-year vision” for the roadway noted there will not be space to maintain a bike lane, pedestrian path and a two-way road long-term. But for now, maintaining two-way car traffic will be the priority and earlier this month, after hearing more from residents, city leaders came up with the suggested priority list, a five-year road map for West Cliff, which includes:
• Shifting a 400-foot stretch of West Cliff that abuts Lighthouse Field State Beach about 50 feet inland. Estimated cost is $2 million. • Restacking existing boulder piles, known as rip rap to help prevent erosion. Estimated cost: $15 million, plus $500,000 in annual maintenance (with limits on rearmoring that would likely be ordered by the state Coastal Commission).
• Creating design standards for signs, landscaping and bike racks. Estimated cost: $100,000.
• Setting up a monitoring network to track cliff and beach erosion and sea-level rise. Estimated cost: $350,000, plus $20,000 in annual maintenance.
• Funding a study to find ways to pay for all this. Estimated cost: $400,000.
But the third and fourth ranked choices from the study – stabilizing sea caves under the cliff and rehabilitating 42 stormwater outfalls to reduce erosion – didn’t make this list.
Santa Cruz City Manager Matt Huffaker told the Sentinel Editorial Board last week that while the city has had the funding, mostly from the federal government, for completed or nearly completed repairs to West Cliff (about $28 million so far), going forward that funding is limited. Huffaker told the board that damages from the past two winters of storms, going into this rainy season, and the span of needed projects to shore up West Cliff have “blown through projections.”
Considering the tax fatigue that has set in, it seems unlikely Santa Cruz voters would approve a city-wide parcel tax for West Cliff. One idea, however, that sounds promising would be creating a parking district that would raise money from people who use West Cliff most frequently. (Residents probably won’t like this option, either.)
But converting West Cliff to one-way traffic, as occurred on East Cliff Drive through the Pleasure Point area in the 1990s, won’t be part of the reshoring efforts over the next five years, even though many Santa Cruz residents, citywide, want West Cliff to be one-way and believe walking, biking, beach access and enjoying the incomparable views are a higher priority than cars.
They’ll undoubtedly get a one-way West Cliff in the not-too distant future. Human agency has no way to hold back the Pacific Ocean.