Picture this: A road with no cars, from Davenport to Watsonville.
By Jessica Lyons-Hardcastle
Hilltromper
Let’s be clear: this is not a multi-million dollar dirt bike path. It’s a brand-new road that will run the length of Santa Cruz County — without cars.
The Coastal Rail Trail is the 32-mile long paved path for biking, walking and wheelchair use that will run alongside the railroad tracks from Davenport to Watsonville. About 50 percent of the county’s population — and 44 schools and 92 parks — are located within 1 mile of the route.
“How long will it take to ride my bike from Capitola to the boardwalk? Fifteen minutes,” says Stephen Slade, deputy director of the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County. “I drove this weekend from Capitola to Seabright and it took us 25 minutes. I live six miles from work and I drive a car every day because I’m not going to ride a bike on Soquel.”
The Land Trust is the project’s lead fundraiser and has also been leading neighborhood walks along sections of the planned trail. The walks, Slade says, make you realize “everything is so close.
“One of the first segments we walked was Watsonville to Manresa Beach. It’s seven miles. On a bike, average bike speed, it’s about a half hour. You talk to all these people in Watsonville who can’t get to the beach easily — well, there you go. And it’s a beautiful seven miles. This project is really opening up the county.”
The Coastal Rail Trail is part of the larger Monterey Bay Sanctuary Scenic Trail Network, a 50-mile bicycle and pedestrian pathway from the San Mateo County line in the north to the Monterey County line at Pajaro. The remaining 18 miles include natural surface paths and bike lanes that connect the Coastal Rail Trail — the network’s “spine” — to neighborhoods, schools, parks and coastal access, transit hubs, commercial centers and existing trails. A safety fence will separate the rail trail’s paved path from the existing and future trains that will use the tracks.
And because it’s adjacent to the train tracks, the rail trail is flat, no more than a 2.5 percent grade at any point. This means tens of thousands of school kids and hundreds of thousands of residents and tourists will have a safe, hill-free way to get to school or work, run errands or see the sites without sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic — or risking life and limb pedaling along Highway 1 or through city streets. Local engineers and transportation officials have designed and will eventually build 96 at-grade crossings and 24 new bridges along the route.
And did we mention the scenery? The northernmost segment runs along the coastal bluffs from Wilder Ranch State Park to Laguna Road and will provide future access to the Coast Dairies property. In the south, a segment from Manresa Beach to Watsonville winds between strawberry and Brussels sprouts fields and along the Watsonville Slough — a birder’s paradise.
Find the rest of the remarkable story about the Coastal Rail Trail on Hilltromper Santa Cruz.
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