Carmageddon: RTC still facing funding gap for passenger rail environmental work

The next major hurdle for Santa Cruz County’s ambitious passenger rail vision comes later this year — finding a significant chunk of money for the project’s environmental analysis.

The environmental review is required before the project can break ground, but has shown to be a notable funding challenge for the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission (RTC). The process involves studying a project’s potential environmental impacts to ensure that it complies with local, state and federal standards.

RTC associate engineer Riley Gerbrandt pointed to two primary funding sources – state and federal grants – or drawing from local transportation funds. In total, the agency needs $14 to $16 million for the environmental analysis.

Gerbrandt told Lookout after Thursday’s meeting that the agency would prefer to have the work funded through grants from federal and state governments, such as money from a California law that allocates $4 billion to regional transportation planning agencies across the state. But such funding is never a guarantee.

The agency’s staff could also request some of the region’s discretionary transportation funding, Gerbrandt said. Those are primarily 2016 Measure D funds, which can pay for a variety of road and transit projects. Gerbrandt said the issue with using discretionary funds is that they are “competitive,” and in high demand across the entire county for the various transportation needs in each jurisdiction.

In December, the RTC is likely to discuss how to distribute the discretionary funds for the upcoming year, which is why the commission is aiming to decide both how the funds will be allocated and what it wants to do with the rail project. At the same December meeting, the commission will also receive a presentation on the final version of the project concept report, and could vote to advance the project into the environmental review stage.

Gerbrandt said that even if the commission does approve the use of discretionary funds for the environmental analysis, whether it will approve the entire amount needed is a different story.

“Even if we commit some of the discretionary funds, it may not cover the whole cost,” he said. “So we’d still need to fill the gap.”

While the agency is aiming to move the train project into the environmental review phase following the December meeting, it’s entirely possible that the commission will, once again, not take any firm action on advancing the project.

“[The commissioners] could also punt it and come back to it another time,” said Gerbrandt. “It could be something like, ‘Let’s just accept the report and figure this out.’”

But a larger gap between the final report presentation and beginning the environmental work might not be entirely a bad thing, because it could give the agency more time to find other sources of funding.

“The time frame is part of the question, too,” said Gerbrandt. “If we were able to push it further out, there might be more opportunities for funding.”

Latest news

Check out our Carmageddon road project list here. This week, pay particular attention to:

• The Highway 1 off-ramps at Park Avenue in Capitola are closed as part of the Highway 1 expansion project. The southbound off-ramp is scheduled to be closed until October. The northbound off-ramp was closed in April and and is slated to stay closed until August.

• The Highway 1 on-ramp at Park Avenue is closed for five months in order for crews to reconstruct the ramp. Northbound travelers will be directed to take Soquel Drive to Porter Street to join northbound Highway 1 at the Bay Avenue/Porter on-ramp. Southbound travelers will be directed to exit Highway 1 at the Bay/Porter off-ramp, continue on Bay Avenue to arrive at Park Avenue. The ramp is expected to reopen in November.

• Pavement, guardrail and erosion control work will shut down about 1 mile of Upper East Zayante Road on weekdays from Monday through early November between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. The road will open up between noon and 12:30 p.m. each day to let traffic pass.

• Shoulder work will cause an overnight closure of one lane of northbound Highway 1 Buena Vista Drive and Rob Roy/Freedom Boulevard from Monday through Friday from 7:30 p.m. to 5 a.m.

• A full closure of the Murray Street Bridge is slated to run until February 2026. It will be closed to vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians. Vehicle traffic will be detoured along Soquel Avenue and Capitola Road via Seabright Avenue and 7th Avenue. Bicycles will be detoured across Arana Gulch and along Broadway via Seabright Avenue and 7th Avenue. Pedestrians will be detoured around the north harbor.

• The installation of the Newell Creek Pipeline on Graham Hill Road between Summit Avenue and Lockewood Lane will take place on weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. and could cause delays of up to five minutes.

• Paving on La Madrona Drive to complete the Santa Cruz-Scotts Valley Intertie Project will shut down the northbound lane of the road on Saturday. The southbound lane will remain open with one-way alternating traffic controls, and Highway 17, Sims Road, and Mount Hermon Road will serve as the main detours.

• Utility work, tree work, and striping will close down sections of Highway 9 between Golf Club Drive and the Paradise Park exit, Old Big Trees Road and San Lorenzo Way, Arboleda Way/Highland and Park Drive/Shadowbrook Lane, Clear Creek/Pacific Street and Irwin Way, and Prospect Avenue and Lorenzo Avenue from Monday through Friday between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m.

• Storm damage repair will shut down sections of Eureka Canyon Road in Corralitos for several months. Work will take place on weekdays only, from 7:30 a.m. through 5 p.m., and is expected to last through Oct. 31.

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