Diversions and deceptions – in the rail-trail debate, Santa Cruz County is getting more rail and less trail

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In the highly contentious Measure D campaign in 2022, the No Way Greenway, aka Coast Connect, aka Friends of the Rail and Trail, had a steady message: “We can have both a train and a trail.” Now, those same people state “… it has always been a rail project with a trail where possible.” 

In June, the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission provided a detailed conceptual design and the community can now see there simply is not room for a rail and a trail as has been promised by rail groups for over a decade.

So what does this mean? 

This means at least two major sections of the proposed trail will have to detour off the corridor and be diverted onto crowded or high-speed highways to give the train priority for the space. (There is also a third area not publicized in Rio Del Mar where there is not enough room for a proposed passing siding. This is leading trail-and-train proponents to push to move a narrow bike lane onto Sumner Avenue.) 

The big glaring issue with this is that portions of the corridor are funded for the trail, but there is absolutely no funding for a train, where even with the most optimistic of estimates, construction would not begin until 2032 with no estimate for a completion date. (Note that construction on the current trail started more than seven years ago, and only 1.25 disjointed miles of the 33 miles planned has been completed.) So even if the trail with the diversions are built, there will be long sections of the corridor sitting unused and it will be over a decade that it is diverting away from unusable train tracks.

Instead of preserving unusable tracks in these sections, we need to take a serious look at whether spending hundreds of millions of dollars while leaving these sections unused really makes sense. At worst, let’s at least not divert the trail while the decision to construct a rail transit system really makes sense. Only then should we consider diverting the trail.

There is still a very large chance that after we spend $25 million on yet another train study, the project will be deemed unrealistic. There is no parking shown in the conceptual designs for many of the stops for the train, putting a strain on businesses and neighborhoods “lucky” enough to get a stop on the route and up to 1.5 million train horn blasts required annually to safely operate a train through the county at each rail and trail crossing.

Also, our county population is shrinking, not growing. 

The county’s population has declined since about 2017 and is now roughly 261,000 people, according to census data. Nearly 8,200 residents left Santa Cruz County from 2020 to 2021, representing a 3% population decline, the report stated. After a small gain in 2022, it declined by 2,300 people in 2023.  

For the second year in a row, we are noted as one of the least affordable places to live and our dwindling population is accounting for it. With a November election chock full of bond measures, we will only get less affordable.

So what can we do about it?

Rather than debate on Nextdoor or other social media, take it to our leadership by contacting them personally. Here are some steps you can take:

• Participate in the Santa Cruz Zero Emission Rail and Trail project virtual open house by July 18 and leave your concerns about diversion, parking and train horns wherever the tracks and trail cross and where the trail is shown to be diverted from the corridor. 
• Write a letter to the Regional Transportation Commission regarding your concerns, and an individual letter to your board of supervisors representative. 
• If you live in District 2, write to the candidates for the supervisor seat,  Kim DeSerpa and Kristen Brown. For District 5, write to supervisor candidates Christopher Bradford and Monica Martinez.
• Take your concerns to the state agencies and commissions overseeing the project by contacting the California Transportation Commission, the California Coastal Commission and the California Department of Transportation. 
• Also voice your concerns at the legislative level. Write to your state legislative representatives – Assemblymember Dawn Addis for District 30 and state Sen. John Laird for District 17.

All of these emails and contact pages can be found here. 

Lastly, stay up to date by signing up for the newsletter from the Santa Cruz Coastal Trail Conservancy at coastaltrail.org. We are fighting for the correct use of our valuable commodity that should be open to all, and not by limited special interest whose campaign promises are tarnishing rapidly.

Jack Brown is an IT program manager in the transportation industry who lives in Aptos. He is the founder and executive director of the Santa Cruz Coastal Trail Conservancy.