Carmageddon: This week’s RTC meeting will be packed with rail-trail business following ‘peace deal’ proposal

This week’s meeting of the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) could chart the path forward for passenger rail in the county, or it could be a major setback for the ambitious project. Commissioners are expected to vote Thursday on whether to proceed with seeking state and federal funding for the project’s next steps. They’ll also discuss an attempt to reconcile opposing sides in the rail-trail debate, with a compromise proposed by two commissioners.

The biggest item on the agenda is passenger rail, with a vote scheduled on whether to continue pursuing state and federal funding for the project, which has an estimated $4 billion price tag. 

Commissioners and community members have been worried about how to pay for the project since a draft concept report came out in June. A new sales tax will likely be required under any funding scenario. 

Since environmental review and preliminary engineering work are still short on funding, RTC staff have recommended that the commission vote to pursue more state and federal grants in order to finish engineering and environmental reviews. Without money to finish those reviews, the project would stop in its tracks. 

The commission will discuss two tangentially related items, too: an informational report on railbanking, and Commissioners Manu Koenig and Fred Keeley’s “peace deal” proposal for four segments of the Coastal Rail Trail.

Railbanking, or taking a rail line out of service while still preserving the corridor for possible train use in the future, is unpopular among commissioners and the general public, except for those who advocate for building only the trail and not the train. But railbanking came back into focus in September as the true cost of building the 32-mile Coastal Rail Trail and a 22-mile passenger rail service became apparent. 

Rail advocates are worried that restoring rail service to a banked corridor in the distant future would be unlikely. To build the trail over the tracks, while still keeping the option of a future train, county supervisor Koenig and Santa Cruz mayor Keeley say another, theoretically less permanent, bureaucratic maneuver would be more successful. 

At stake is the $96 million grant that the state awarded the county to build four rail-trail segments from the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf to State Park Drive in Aptos. It could be taken away if the project doesn’t break ground in 2027.

Koenig and Keeley plan to introduce other federal regulatory designations (known as embargoed, discontinued or under affirmative order) for this stretch of rail that they say would achieve the same goal of preserving the rail corridor, but would be faster and more easily reversible than railbanking, allowing the project to meet deadlines and keep that state grant. 

The meeting will begin at 9 a.m. Thursday morning at the Watsonville City Council chambers, and also accessible via Zoom.

Friends of the Rail and Trail opposes Koenig-Keeley “peace deal”

Koenig and Keeley hope their compromise proposal appeals to both rail devotees and trail supporters, but one of the major players in the debate quickly came out against their idea.

Matt Farrell, board chair of rail advocacy group Friends of the Rail and Trail, said the prospect of removing the railroad tracks was the main reason for the group’s opposition. “Once the tracks are removed, they will not come back,” he said in a statement.

Farrell also added that the Santa Cruz Branch Rail Line is a part of the federal Corridor ID Program, a Federal Railroad Administration program that provides the RTC with rail planning and design services. He argued that removing the tracks could mean losing access to the program. He also added that because the deal is not available for the public to review, the RTC shouldn’t consider it until further public engagement takes place.

“Commissioners Keeley and Koenig should be commended for their focus on finding a solution to what is clearly a vexing situation,” Farrell wrote. “Their vision needs significant revision to find a way forward for the Coastal Rail and Trail project that honors the will of the voters: build the trail and keep the rail for future passenger service.”

Latest news

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

• Roadway improvements are shutting down one lane of Highway 9 between Willow Brook Drive and the northern junction of Highway 236 starting on Monday and scheduled to last through May 20, 2026. Work hours are 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Mondays through Thursdays.

• Storm damage repairs on the railroad bridge at New Brighton State Beach in Capitola will cause intermittent traffic delays for those traveling to and from the park during December.

• Emergency sewer work in Soquel Village could occasionally block access to driveways, sidewalks, on-street parking and interrupt sewer service on weekdays until June 30, 2026, on Soquel Drive, Porter Street and Main Street. Work on Soquel Drive will be overnight from 8:30 p.m. to 5:30 a.m. and from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Porter and Main Streets. Other, shorter-duration potholing on Porter, Main and Center streets and Daubenbiss Avenue will take place from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

• Paving and electrical work is shutting down the northbound Highway 1 on-ramp at Main Street and the off-ramp at Airport Boulevard overnight between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. from Monday through Thursday. Paving is also shutting down the northbound Highway 1 on-ramp at Mar Monte Avenue between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m.

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

• The installation of the Newell Creek Pipeline on Graham Hill Road between Summit Avenue and Lockewood Lane is taking place on weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. and could cause delays of up to 5 minutes.

Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.