LIVE OAK — Santa Cruz County bicyclists can now trip among the many whales, and a swimsuit gained’t be obligatory.
The Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Fee, in partnership with Caltrans and the county, introduced Wednesday that the bicycle and pedestrian Freeway 1 overcrossing at Chanticleer Avenue — colloquially often called the “whale bridge” — is open for public use after years of building.
“The opening of this bridge represents a major step forward in improving transportation safety, access, and equity in our community,” the fee’s Government Director Sarah Christensen mentioned in a media launch. “This bridge provides a vital connection between people, neighborhoods, and opportunities.”
The lighted bridge, with fencing that’s outfitted with arching steel silhouettes of whales, is 14 ft huge and offers a protected, devoted passage over all six lanes of the freeway for vacationers that may in any other case use interchanges throughout forty first Avenue or Soquel Drive. Planners mentioned energetic transportation customers will now profit from this new hyperlink that connects neighborhoods, faculties, parks and group locations that weren’t so simply accessible earlier than.
The opening of the bridge additionally marks formal completion of the inaugural section of the fee’s Watsonville-Santa Cruz Multimodal Hall Program, which broke floor in 2023. The defining characteristic of the three-phase undertaking is a mixture system of auxiliary lanes and pink bus-on-shoulder services meant to expedite route instances for Santa Cruz Metro buses.
The auxiliary lanes established within the first section from Soquel Drive to forty first Avenue opened to automobile site visitors in April, however the bus-only elements gained’t be put to make use of till 2026 when the second section of the undertaking, bookended by the Bay Avenue/Porter Road and State Park Drive exits, is anticipated to complete. Included inside that section is one other bicycle and pedestrian bridge at Mar Vista Drive, in addition to an entire restructuring of the Capitola Avenue bridge with improved different transit services.
The development price ticket for this primary section of the undertaking was $34 million, in response to the fee’s launch, which got here from quite a lot of sources together with Measure D freeway hall investments, discretionary funds from the fee and aggressive state grants. Watsonville-based Granite Development served as the first contractor for the undertaking.
Whereas the bridge will stay open to public use for the foreseeable future, the fee plans to carry an official ribbon reducing ceremony from 5:30-7 p.m. July 30 on the West Marine Middle in Santa Cruz at 2450 seventeenth Ave.
Initially Printed: July 17, 2025 at 8:30 AM PDT
