After town hall, Capitola councilmembers prepare to vote on contested Park Ave. trail proposal

Members of the Capitola City Council are looking ahead to a special council meeting on April 17, when they expect to vote on the Coastal Rail Trail’s proposed Park Avenue alignment, a decision they delayed in February.

A community town hall Wednesday evening at New Brighton Middle School, hosted by the City of Capitola in partnership with the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission (RTC), focused on Capitola-specific issues related to the Coastal Rail Trail, including a notably contentious debate over where a 0.7-mile stretch of the trail should run near Park Avenue.

Transportation officials also touched on the Capitola trestle, which is being recommended for replacement, as well as mobile home encroachments along the rail line on both sides of where a segment of the rail trail is planned between 17th Avenue in Live Oak and 47th Avenue in Capitola. These issues were also highlighted in a community meeting in early March.

In February, the Capitola City Council delayed a vote on an RTC plan that envisioned the trail diverging from the rail line in the Park Avenue area within the city of Capitola. The motion passed by a 3-1 vote, with only Councilmember Melinda Orbach voting against the delay. Vice Mayor Alexander Pedersen abstained from the vote because his home is close to the project.

RTC and county staff said constructing a separated multi-use path adjacent to the road would be cheaper than building it on the coastal side of the tracks, where it was initially proposed. The city council requested that the RTC provide more details to residents and officials before taking a formal vote.

The Park Avenue proposal is a hot topic for a number of reasons, but the main issues can likely be traced back to community division over the “interim” and “ultimate” trail designs. The former implies removing the rails and laying the trail over them, while the latter involves building the trail alongside the existing train tracks. County staff says that the “interim” design is infeasible, at least in the short term, due to the lengthy process of railbanking and abandoning the rail line in order to build the trail over where the tracks currently lie.

Shifting the trail onto city streets and sidewalks through Capitola was also the focal point of Measure L, a 2018 city ballot measure that sought to prevent the city from diverting the trail off of the trestle bridge through Capitola Village. The measure passed with 52% of the vote.

County planner Rob Tidmore told the 100-plus attendees that there are a number of benefits that come with building a multi-use trail alongside Park Avenue rather than on the coastal side of the tracks, beyond just reduced construction costs. Those include better connectivity between Capitola Village and the Cliffwood Heights neighborhoods, and better ocean views. Tidmore added that the Park Avenue plan also reduces long-term impacts to monarch butterfly habitats, prevents conflict with properties that encroach onto the rail corridor, and is farther away from the eroding coastal cliffside. 

Tidmore also said that the plan helps the city better control its traffic compared to what the city could afford to build with only its own money. The city has been separately working on its own traffic calming project for Park Avenue that would include narrower lanes, improved striping, buffered bike lanes and pedestrian safety improvements.

Tidmore also addressed safety concerns that people said they had with running a trail alongside city streets. He said the trail would be fully separated from the roadway and the vehicles traveling on it: “We are not simply proposing to put paint on the roadway. This will be a separated multi-use trail adjacent to the roadway, not an on-street facility.”

Tidmore explained that the planned trail would be both on a curb and separated from the cars by a buffer area — a space filled with a feature like landscaping for more room between the trail and cars. He said that it would be like the path on West Cliff Drive in Santa Cruz, except with a buffer area between the path and the road.

There are two possible options for the Park Avenue alignment. While both include a 6-inch curb and a 3-foot buffer, “option A” preserves the existing on-street bike lane, allowing cyclists to use either the trail or the on-street bike lane, while “option B” eliminates it, leaving only the trail.

Tidmore said that if the Capitola City Council approves either Park Avenue option, county staff would request approval of further environmental review of the work from the board of supervisors, because it was not originally included in the environmental impact reports for Segments 10 and 11. RTC staff would then request funding for environmental review from the RTC in May and conduct that work over the summer. The project team would come back to the city council in the fall to approve the entire project.

If the city council does not approve Park Avenue, county and RTC staff would request the RTC’s support to revert to the coastal alignment, despite its increased cost and challenges. Tidmore said that as a backup option, staff would consider dropping the entire 0.7-mile stretch of trail, but he warned that the California Transportation Commission could view that as lowering the public benefit of the project and pull some of the funding.

Tidmore told Lookout after the meeting that he believes the RTC would ultimately approve the original coastal alignment should the Capitola City Council vote down the Park Avenue option. However, if the RTC also did not support the coastal alignment, that would leave a 0.7-mile gap in the trail, which Tidmore said would “definitely lead to a loss of some money” – though he didn’t know how much grant money could ultimately be lost.

Following the staff presentation, members of the public had 45 minutes to make comments. Attendees were largely divided on the issue, with many doubling down on the safety concerns they have with routing the trail through Park Avenue and, separately, reiterating their desire to keep the Capitola Village trestle. Others argued that the Park Avenue option would be safer for cyclists and potentially result in drivers lowering their speed due to a slightly narrower road.

Capitola City Councilmember Gerry Jensen said he’s glad that the city held the town hall, and plans to meet with RTC executive director Sarah Christensen in the near future to inform his decision. He does not know how he will vote, he added, as he still needs to understand how city laws affect the project. 

“We have to think about the municipal code and the overall strategy of what looks best for the whole county,” Jensen said. “These are the challenges that we have to work with.”

Capitola Mayor Joe Clarke also declined to comment on how he plans to vote, but similarly said working with city laws is the biggest challenge – particularly if and how Measure L applies in this case.

“My biggest concern is with our own city municipal code — Measure L — and how we are going to address that as we move forward on any of the projects,” he said.

Additionally, at a meeting Thursday, the RTC will lay out a plan to borrow against future Measure D tax revenues to speed up the construction of major transportation projects, including segments of the Coastal Rail Trail.

The agency says it expects it will need to borrow money within the next two years to meet existing funding commitments, according to a presentation to commissioners. It has hired Berkeley-based financial advisory firm KNN Public Finance to explore ways to borrow against the remaining years of Measure D funds. The measure, approved by voters in 2016, generates revenue through a half-cent sales tax, to last 30 years, dedicated to transportation projects.

The RTC won $102 million in state funding for segments of the Coastal Rail Trail and $248 million for its project to add auxiliary lanes and dedicated shoulder lanes for buses to Highway 1. But the RTC has committed to matching those state grants with local money, including about $20 million for Coastal Rail Trail segments and $124 million for Highway 1 improvements.

RTC staff say that borrowing against future tax revenues could mean seeing major transportation projects completed years ahead of schedule. They argue that the benefits of completing projects sooner and qualifying for major state grants outweigh the costs of borrowing.

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