Draft Rural Highways Safety Plan Report Available for Review

The draft report for the Rural Highways Safety Plan (RHSP) is now available for public review and comment. As part of Milestone 3: Rural Highways Safety Plan Final Report, the project will propose Safety Enhancement Concepts for ten emphasis areas identified through crash pattern analysis and public input as part of Milestone 2: Transportation Strategy Development.

The community provided feedback on the draft concepts for six weeks in October and November of 2025, nearly 50 pages of comments were reviewed by the project team and will be considered as the concepts are updated and finalized for the report. 

Visit https://www.sccrtc.org/projects/streets-highways/rural-highways-safety-plan/ to view the Draft Rural Highways Safety Plan Report. Please provide your feedback via email to info@sccrtc.org, and include “RHSP” in the subject line. Share your feedback on the Draft RHSP Report by 12 noon on Tuesday, February 17.

About the Plan

The Santa Cruz County Rural Highways Safety Plan (RHSP) seeks to enhance safety for all users of the County’s six conventional highways: specifically, Highway 1 north of the City of Santa Cruz city limits, Highway 9, Highway 236, Highway 35, and Highways 129 and 152 outside the City of Watsonville city limits, which collectively function as main streets, intercommunity connectors, and rural highways.  

The objective is to identify locations of patterns of crashes to generate and prioritize a suite of implementable countermeasures, to create a roadmap to Vision Zero. The intent is to achieve zero traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2050 with projects and strategies implemented through close partnerships with Caltrans.

Milestone 3 is scheduled to be brought before the Commission in March 2026. See our Commission Agendas page for more information.

Please contact RHSP Project Manager Brianna Goodman at info@sccrtc.org if you have any questions, including “RHSP” in the subject line. Sign up for RHSP updates at the RTC eNews sign-up page and select “Vision Zero” Program Updates.