City council to consider road diet for Scotts Valley Drive

The Scotts Valley city council will receive a Scotts Valley Drive Complete Street Analysis report during the city council meeting on the evening of Wednesday, September 18, 2024. Bike Santa Cruz County invites you to encourage city council to select a design option that will benefit the town the most.

Scotts Valley Drive is currently a four to five lane traffic sewer that runs the length of town, a ludicrous width of pavement for the roughly 8,000 vehicles per day that travel here. The report suggests four different designs to reconfigure this main thoroughfare:

1. Buffered bike lanes + two car lanes in each direction with center turn lane (low cost).
2. Protected bike lanes that are separated from cars with landscaping + two car lanes in each direction with no center turn lane (moderate cost).
3. Two-way bike lanes on one side of the street + two car lanes in each direction with center turn lane (high cost).
4. Wider sidewalks, wider protected bike lanes that are separated from cars with landscaping, and one car lane in each direction with center turn lane (high cost, but what a way to transform the streetscape!)

Bike Santa Cruz County is sending out an Action Alert that encourages people to support Layout #4 in the report. You can read their suggested talking points in this sample letter.

Two talking points opposing this vision that are unique to Scotts Valley include:

• Scotts Valley Drive was extensively reconstructed in the 1990s. Some sitting council members, including one who generally has been supportive of other cycling endeavors in Scotts Valley, were involved in the decision to spend money for this project back then, and they have already mentioned that they feel like it might be a waste of money to undo their work. There’s probably a more polite way to say this to people who are invested in the old project, but it was a horrible idea in the 1990s, and it remains a bad idea today.
• Scotts Valley needs five lanes for emergency evacuations. Scotts Valley is located in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and most of the population had to evacuate quickly during the CZU Lightning Complex Fires. I know first hand the terrifying feeling of a rapidly approaching wildfire, but, honestly, Highway 17 has the lane capacity to evacuate the entire town inside of an hour. Cal Fire is also much more willing to issue evacuation orders ever since the Paradise Fire disaster.

We have a lot of NIMBYs in town, so you’ll hear misinformation about the scope of the project as well. Any lane reductions on Scotts Valley Drive will happen only between about Victor Square and Bean Creek Road.

The meeting begins at 6 PM. If you attend in person or virtually via Zoom, members of the public are given opportunity to speak for three minutes on each agenda item. If you attend in person at city council chambers, you can proceed to the public comment podium when the Mayor opens the item for public comment.

For Zoom attendees, use the webinar attendee option to “raise hand” when the Mayor opens the item for public comment. The Clerk will unmute you when it is your turn. If you have joined via Zoom phone call, dial *9 or your phone to “raise your hand”, and the Clerk will unmute you when it is your turn.

You can view the full report online at the city council agenda portal.