City of Santa Cruz passes Active Transportation Plan

The City of Santa Cruz is moving ahead with a plan to encourage residents to be more active. The plan is to make the community more bicycle and pedestrian friendly.

Santa Cruz streets already see a large number of cyclists. The city says with its new Active Transportation Plan, they may see even more.

“There’s about 60 percent of people in our community who would call themselves interested but concerned about cycling” said transportation manager Claire Fliesler. “Their biggest concern is about speed of traffic and about riding near cars.”

The City of Santa Cruz does have bike lanes on some of their roads but the Active Transportation Plan will use grant money to improve them, making them more clear to traffic and safer for cyclists.

It’s something cyclists already on the road are looking forward to.

“I think it’d be really good for this community” said local cyclist Erin Reintjes. “It would be really helpful to expand it as much as possible so people can get from point A to point B and not have to merge with traffic.”

One Santa Cruz bike shop owner thinks it will enhance the local cycling economy.

“It’s always better for the community, it’s certainly better for the cycling industry” said Wade Hall, Owner of Spokesman Bicycles in Santa Cruz. “Santa Cruz county has a very heavy cycling industry component so it’s important to all of us in some ways.”

The city already has 17 million dollars in grant money to put towards the Active Transportation Plan. They say the next step is to pursue even more to get those pedestrians and cyclists out on the trails and roads.