SANTA CRUZ >> The half-mile stretch of pavement tracing the edge of the bluff along East Cliff Drive is iconic for a reason and it attracts a diverse group of visitors every day arriving by car, bicycle or on foot — often with a surfboard tucked under their arm.

But the area’s high usage not only accelerates a natural wear and tear on public infrastructure that is meant to keep things organized — such as signage, road and sidewalk paint — it also leads to frequent and unique points of conflict that has local leaders asking if there’s a better way.

In an effort to capitalize on additional funding made available through the county’s recent tax increase, Supervisor Manu Koenig has spent the past several months soliciting community feedback about how the popular coastal destination’s transportation plan can be redesigned, or reinforced, to create a better visiting experience for everyone.

“This is a completely discretionary project for the service of the community,” Koenig said to a crowd of approximately 25 people assembled Monday for a community meeting on the subject. “This is absolutely up to what the community wants to do.”

Outfitting East Cliff Drive with some sorely needed improvements has been a priority for Koenig in recent years, not just because he too has noticed the steady erosion of its traffic paint, but also because he regularly gets calls and messages from concerned residents and visitors. Many have shared stories of incidents with electric bicycles, which continue to surge in popularity locally and across the country.

Along with that popularity has come lots of attention and reported incidents. Reported e-bike crashes across the county surged from 18 in 2023 to 50 in 2024 — a single-year increase of 178% — though Koenig said bicycle crashes along East Cliff Drive have been relatively limited. Still, the increasing ubiquity of the battery-powered two-wheelers has warranted design scrutiny, Koenig reasoned.

Five options

Koenig has shared five configurations of the parkway from 32nd to 41st avenues, or, as the surfers might put it: from the Hook to the Point. The stretch of roadway currently includes a one-way lane for vehicles moving east that is adjoined by a curb and mixed-use path shared by bicyclists and pedestrians. While the project doesn’t include interventions that remove curbs or tear up significant portions of pavement, there is an opportunity to repaint road markings as they were or to establish a new layout and signage that represents a shift in how traffic flows, primarily for bicyclists and pedestrians.

The current layout puts a single vehicle lane on the left moving in the east direction, with a bicycle lane moving in the same direction next to it. Up on the curb, the phrase “keep right” is painted on the pavement along with an arrow pointing in both directions on the sidewalk, which applies to bicyclists and pedestrians and is accompanied by a sign that reads “share the path.”

Aside from painting over the old lines, the next closest design change would establish a bicycle lane in the east direction on the curb, accompanied by green striping, an arrow and a marker of a bicyclist. The remaining space on the coastal parkway would be dedicated to pedestrians only. The next option is the same design, but with the direction of bicyclists swapped — bicyclists on the road travel against traffic and move west while those on the curb are directed east.

The remaining two options aim to separate bicyclists and pedestrians by placing two bicycle lanes on the street next to the vehicles. One configuration has the bicycle lanes on the coastal side, referred to as Option E, while the other places them on the inland side of the roadway, known as Option D.

“Believe me, some days I look at it and think, ‘Yeah, this could work,’“ said Koenig. “And then there are days where it’s like, ‘Ah, no, too different.’”

Luckily, Koenig has enlisted some help to weigh the options. The second-term supervisor began sharing a public survey in December that asked community members in the area to rank their preferred scenarios. The survey was originally sent out to 2,400 residents living near East Cliff Drive and then to a broader cohort of 16,000 registered voters in the area and subscribers to Koenig’s newsletter.

Of the 920 respondents, more than 58%, or 528 people, ranked the options for separating bicyclists and pedestrians as their top choices. The top vote-getter was design Option E, which received 348 votes and puts two bicycle lanes on the coastal side of the street. The westbound lane is next to the curb, while the eastbound one is to its left and moves in the same direction as vehicle traffic.

Another way

Koenig was joined by county Assistant Director of Public Works Steve Wiesner in explaining that the alternative setups will require the establishment of new community norms that look akin to standards seen in Europe.

Wiesner was part of a group of local politicians and transportation planners who traveled to the Netherlands last summer with Ecology Action to observe different transit systems and speak with experts. One takeaway, Wiesner told the crowd inside the Live Oak Library Annex, was that the transportation infrastructure in the Netherlands was built around a philosophy that ranked which travelers were most vulnerable to extreme injury in low-speed settings. By this thinking, bicyclists were generally the most at risk, followed by pedestrians and car drivers.

Most everyone visiting East Cliff is coming for recreational purposes, reasoned Wiesner, so if the county could reduce the road’s speed limit from 25 mph to less than 20 mph, it could make the popular roadway the perfect area to try a new paradigm.

“The concept here is to give bikes their own space away from pedestrians. Bicycle-on-pedestrian collisions can actually be really, really bad for both bikes and pedestrians,” said Wiesner. “If cars are going very slow, it’s really easy to react to either pedestrians or bicycles.”

These dangers were made apparent last fall when 82-year-old Helen Hines was struck and killed by a man riding an e-bike while she was on her morning walk along Opal Cliff Drive.

Community response

The audience in the room was divided about the best way to proceed, with a wave of initial comments that voiced a preference for the status quo. Residents partial to this perspective shared doubts that visitors would be able or willing to adapt to the Netherlands approach. Others shared concerns about bicyclist safety if they were forced to move even closer to vehicles.

Paul Boyer, a cyclist for more than four decades and a resident of the East Cliff area for 14 years, said improvements can be made simply through more specific signage, repainted lines and community education, especially for teens using e-bikes.

“Most significant accidents or fatalities have occurred when we’re telling bicyclists to go against traffic flow,” said Boyer. “That should be a last, last, last resort.”

But eventually, residents more aligned with the survey voters began to speak up.

Will Mayall, known for his advocacy efforts with Santa Cruz County Greenway, didn’t have safety concerns with bicyclists riding in the opposite direction of traffic — known as “contraflow” — and said most drivers are already taking it slow enough on East Cliff Drive to make navigation simple.

“It’s not a fast road; most people are actually driving about 15 mph. Sometimes I pass cars, just pedaling along beside them,” said Mayall. “You’ve (the bicyclist) got somebody behind you; they see you completely; they’re not trying to pass you because they can’t pass you.”

Another attendee shared confusion about why the county would OK designs that put e-bikes close to pedestrians when it passed an e-bike ban on county sidewalk’s last year. Koenig explained that East Cliff has been permitted by the California Coastal Commission as a mixed-use parks facility, rendering the sidewalk ban inapplicable.

Koenig also said that roadway speed bumps are a possibility, but they often become a noise nuisance and might bloat the project’s modest $100,000 budget for initial implementation.

Based on community feedback up to this point, Koenig and his team plan to put out another survey to directly compare any proposed changes with the existing conditions. If changes are identified, a trial implementation, or “quick build,” could be rolled out as soon as October. And if that goes well, the design could be made permanent next July.

Changes are entirely up to the discretion of Koenig and 1st District residents and while it won’t require approval from the Board of Supervisors, the county will have to apply for an “immaterial amendment” from the Coastal Commission.

Koenig said future surveys and updates will be shared through his newsletter and on social media. Updates will also be posted on the 1st District webpage at santacruzcountyca.gov.