Nearly seven years later, Capitola’s 2018 Measure L is a focal point in rail trail vote

A contentious vote set for Thursday on a plan to divert a walking and biking path off the rail corridor and next to a Capitola street is reviving a debate about a ballot measure the city’s voters passed nearly seven years ago.

Measure L sought to keep the city from detouring the trail off of the trestle bridge through Capitola. Sponsored by Greenway, the group that would later go on to back 2022’s Measure D, the 2018 ballot measure aimed to preserve the historic Capitola trestle for trail use. Measure L’s backers objected to plans by the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission to detour the Coastal Rail Trail around the trestle and onto city streets because of concerns over cost and the structural integrity of the bridge. 

Those who supported the initiative when it was on the ballot seven years ago say they voted in favor of it to prevent safety issues that would be caused by a major influx of cyclists on city streets and to preserve the Capitola trestle for trail use. Those who opposed the measure believe it to be an attempt to slow or stall passenger rail development.

Passed with 52% of the vote in 2018, Measure L has been codified into a law that requires the city to take “all steps necessary” to keep the trail on the rail corridor and maintain the trestle for pedestrians, cyclists, wheelchair users and skateboarders. It also prohibits the city from spending money on construction, maintenance or signage for a detour.

Since Measure L’s passage, the law has created confusion among city officials and sparked disagreement among proponents and opponents of the RTC’s rail and trail plans over what, exactly, it allows the city to do when it comes to the trail through Capitola. At the time, then-Capitola City Attorney Tony Condotti wrote in an impartial analysis that Measure L’s terms may be too vague to be enforceable, the measure raised “a number of legal concerns,” and it could open the city up to a lawsuit over its validity.

The Capitola City Council eventually challenged the ballot initiative in court, alleging possible conflicts with city planning documents, in an attempt to keep the measure off the ballot, to no avail. Now, councilmembers will need to decide whether the laws the city codified after Measure L passed even apply to a 0.7-mile section of trail that the RTC wants to detour off the rail corridor and onto a separated multi-use path next to Park Avenue — a different issue from the trestle over Soquel Creek in Capitola Village.

Capitola city staff argued in a February report that the Park Avenue option would not violate Measure L because it is not a detour, since the RTC hasn’t yet built Segment 11, which is planned to run from 47th Avenue in Capitola to State Park Drive in Aptos. City staff argued that the dictionary defines a detour as a “departure from a direct course” or a “roundabout way temporarily replacing the regular route.” Staff also said that the planned Park Avenue trail section is not proposed for city streets or sidewalks, and is intended to be a new, physically separated structure with a curb and a buffer area between the path and the roadway.

TJ Welch, a Capitola resident and founding member of Concerned Citizens of Capitola who voted in favor of Measure L, said he believes the law is quite clear that the trail cannot run onto city streets, which is what he sees the Park Avenue proposal doing, despite RTC and city staff saying otherwise.

“We’re saying that the municipal code applies to all of the city limits of Capitola, and that they can’t violate it,” he said. “The whole intent was to keep our cyclists, kids and everyone safe on the corridor, not having that on the streets.”

He added that the group plans to launch a recall effort against any councilmembers who vote Thursday in favor of the Park Avenue option.

Welch, who was on the city’s planning commission for eight years and also served on the finance committee, said he is even more grateful for the passage of Measure L now that the RTC is proposing to build a section of trail next to Park Avenue: “I had no idea our city and the county would be so forceful about running this trail into our city.”

Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commissioner Mike Rotkin, on the other hand, said Measure L was “poison pills.” While preserving the Capitola trestle was a main reason for the initiative, its passage does not lock the trail into the trestle, he said. Rotkin added that there is not enough political will to run the trail over the trestle, as that would require railbanking — ripping up the tracks with the possibility of reinstalling them at a future date — which he said the RTC will not pursue.

“It’s kind of like playing chicken. If they make this messy enough and threatening enough that the RTC is going to give up and give them what they want, which is to not build a train and to build a trail over the trestle,” he said. “It’s not going to happen. There are no votes for that, not even from the Capitola representatives.”

County planner Rob Tidmore added that while Measure L is now city code, it “didn’t remove any regulatory hurdles needed to get a trail on the trestle” and didn’t provide funding to do the work required for that scenario.

Rotkin added that he sees the law as generally ineffective, because it ultimately cannot restrict cyclists to the rail corridor in and of itself. “[The city] can’t actually block people from walking or riding a bicycle through Capitola,” he said. “What they can do, I suppose, is not put up signs telling people this is the rail trail.”

Gayle Ortiz, who also supported Measure L, said that if the city moves forward with the Park Avenue option, it would be a major problem, as traffic congestion is already severe on Capitola city streets due to many commuters cutting through Capitola to avoid Highway 1. Ortiz, owner of Gayle’s Bakery & Rosticceria and a former Capitola city councilmember, added that she recalls a number of bad accidents between drivers and cyclists within the city, and that even a separated path would not be enough: “It doesn’t matter how big the buffer is, it’s not going to be safe.”

Like Ortiz, Welch also believes that the Park Avenue option isn’t safe enough for commuters, cyclists and pedestrians — even if it would be a step up from the current on-street bike lane. The original plan for the coastal side of the tracks would be farther away from the street, and separated by the train tracks.

“It would of course be safer than the bike lane that’s currently there, having a curb and a little more room, but it’s certainly not as safe as it would have been [on the coastal side],” he said.

Welch told Lookout that the objection to the Park Avenue plan, and the motivation behind 2018’s Measure L, isn’t necessarily because people like him are against a train.

“I really am a proponent of the trail; if they can fit a train and they can find the funding for it, then more power to them,” he said. “That’s not our argument. Our argument is it’s not safe to run the trail through our village and through the city.”

Tidmore previously said that, should the Capitola City Council reject the Park Avenue option, the project team would go back to the RTC and request support for the original coastal alignment. That plan envisioned the trail on the other side of the rail corridor, farther away from Park Avenue.

Rotkin, however, is not thrilled at that idea, and would not want to approve any other trail alignment. If the RTC doesn’t support that option, it could lead to a 0.7-mile gap in the trail.

“I can’t speak for the commission as a whole, but my view is, sorry guys, we were going to pay for it, and we were going to build it. You were successful at stopping us and we’re not going to spend the money on that,” he said. “We’ll take it and spend it on some other part of the trail. Believe me, there’s lots of other parts of the trail that people would like to see.”

But Ortiz said she thinks Capitola residents should not budge. “In Capitola, we have to look out for ourselves, because the rest of the county isn’t,” she said.

With all of that in mind, Capitola city councilmembers likely have a difficult discussion on their hands come Thursday. Councilmember Gerry Jensen said that while he has yet to decide how he will vote, he believes that the confusion around Measure L should have been clarified long ago. For that reason, he thinks it’s unreasonable for the council to be pressured to make a decision on the Park Avenue plan so quickly.

“If this was an issue that was contentious and confusing, it should have been clarified so that our community could unite around one common thread,” he said. “That lack of forward thinking has put us in the jam that we are in today.”

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