A July 30 ribbon-cutting ceremony marked the official opening of the "whale bridge" to pedestrians and bicyclists crossing Highway 1 at Chanticleer Avenue. The bridge completed the first of three phases in CalTrans current plans for the heavily-used freeway.
During its construction, the usefulness of the bridge suffered two successive blows: first, Kaiser Permanente pulled out of its planned large healthcare development on Soquel Avenue (Hwy 1 frontage road), near the southern end of the new bridge. The main goal of the bridge was to provide a direct walk/bike connection from the new Kaiser facilities to related Dominican/Sutter facilities to the north of the bridge.
The county reacted to the loss of expected healthcare-related bridge traffic by putting off planned walk/bike improvements to Chanticleer Avenue north of the bridge - most of the street lacks any such non-vehicular amenities (not even sidewalks). It remains to be seen whether future developments will remove the "bridge to nowhere" status.
The active work sites now move a bit farther east in phase 2 (the eventual phase 3 end point is at Freedom Boulevard). Reconstruction of the Capitola Avenue overpass is scheduled to be completed in November. The narrow old bridge had skinny sidewalks and no bike lanes, so the new wider version will be an improvement.
The Capitola Avenue overpass lies between two interchanges. The westernmost, at Bay Avenue/Porter Street, serves Soquel to the north and Capitola to the south. The next interchange to the east is at Park Avenue, heavily used for access to Cabrillo College. SCCRTC announced that Park Avenue on/off ramps that have been closed for improvements are scheduled to reopen on September 3 (a bit ahead of schedule!).
In the same announcement, closure of the Bay/Porter interchange was to be the next day, September 4. An update, however, says the closure will be delayed indefinitely, until further notice. No reason was given in the brief update, so we'll watch for news about that.
