WATSONVILLE—Concerned parents of students attending schools in downtown Watsonville are demanding that the City make drastic pedestrian safety improvements.
Maura Carrasco Leonor, a mother of a 14-year-old at Ceiba College Prep Academy, has for the last month helped circulate a petition that calls for the City and Caltrans to prioritize worn or nonexistent crosswalks, stop signs and lighting throughout Walker, Rodriguez, Second and Locust streets. It also asks the city to reduce the speed limit on Walker Street from Riverside Drive through Ford Street.
That petition, she said, has been signed by more than 500 people in the weeks leading up to the Feb. 25 City Council meeting. Council members at that meeting will determine an action plan for projects listed in a trio of plans that seek to make the city safer for pedestrians.
The Downtown Complete Streets and Complete Streets to School plans, both of which have been in the works for more than a year, serve as roadmaps for the City as it makes millions of dollars worth of changes to its streets over the course of several years.
Carrasco Leonor said she and several other parents believe the changes they are calling for are long overdue.
“We need action,” Carrasco-Leonor said. “Acknowledgment is not going to give us anything. We need [the council] to show us you can do something for us now.”
The City has for years tried to address its well-known woes with pedestrian safety. Along with drafting the aforementioned plans, Watsonville in 2018 also adopted Vision Zero, a multi-national initiative that acknowledges traffic fatalities are preventable and aims to come up with solutions to achieve a zero death goal by 2030.
Now known as the Safe Streets Save Lives-Vision Zero Action Plan, the document is an all-encompassing plan that involves a sprawling list of officials from various city and county offices, including Watsonville Police Department, Caltrans, the Pajaro Valley Unified School District and the Santa Cruz County Health Services Agency.
More than a dozen of the 37 items from that plan have been implemented, including increased enforcement in what the City has deemed “zero tolerance” zones along Main Street and Freedom Boulevard.
Yet, Carrasco Leonor and other parents say those plans have done very little to curb the speeding and distracted driving that leads to incidents involving pedestrians.
Case in point: a collision between a van and two boys in a Walker Street crosswalk late last year that sent both young people to out-of-county trauma centers.
“That was the last straw,” Carrasco Leonor said. “When it affects kids, when parents don’t know if their kids are going to be safe doing something as simple as walking to school, something needs to be done…The safety of children is our biggest concern.”
PVUSD Board President Daniel Dodge Jr. and City Councilman Felipe Hernandez last month attended a Saturday morning meeting at Ceiba to hear the parents’ concerns. The meeting, Dodge said, was a clear reminder that improvements are needed for the streets surrounding Watsonville High School, Radcliff Elementary School and Ceiba, where his daughter attends school.
“It’s always been an issue, and one that we know needs to be addressed,” he said. “I’m glad the parents are getting together and organizing to bring some change.”
