Quick Take
After years of studies, the RTC published its final report on a proposed passenger train this month ahead of a December meeting for the rail project. The plans largely stay the course, though some call for routing the train through the Beach Flats area to avoid the Boardwalk, with longer travel times and possibly higher costs.
There are few surprises and no drastic changes to the highly anticipated final project concept report on Santa Cruz County’s ambitious passenger rail project released last week. The report from the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) contains minor but notable adjustments and additional details to the 300-plus-page document first published in June.
The commission is poised to consider the final report at its December meeting and discuss railbanking — a process that would allow the RTC to build a trail on top of the Santa Cruz Branch Rail Line while theoretically preserving the corridor for future use for a train. Commissioners could vote either to advance the project into the environmental review stage, or to pause it altogether. Here are some of the final takeaways.
Ridership holds steady — with plans to grow
Ridership estimates aim to gauge how well a transit service would perform, but they’re difficult to get right, especially in a place like Santa Cruz County, which is building new housing and planning for an influx of new residents in the coming years.
Transportation planners used two mathematical models, one to predict future travel patterns given current roads and transit and another that also takes into account changes in land-use and zoning rules, such as new, denser housing developments. Together, they estimated daily weekday ridership between 4,200 and 5,400 boardings.
The final report also includes an “optimized ridership scenario” that considers major land-use changes to encourage transit-oriented development — housing, jobs and transit connections at or close to a station. This indicates that the transit agency is planning how it would respond to more development around stations, which could include reconfiguring Santa Cruz Metro routes and improving bike and pedestrian infrastructure around stations.
Possible station and route changes
The final report lists the same locations for the nine proposed stations, but with possible changes to the route.
The biggest change under consideration would run the train through the Beach Flats area. The route as currently planned goes in front of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, which would come with numerous challenges like visitor access and safety, parking, traffic circulation and property-use issues. However, the report says that a Beach Flats alignment would require more study and stakeholder engagement.
The report also notes that there could be room to develop another station track at the Pajaro station to cut down on turnaround times. It also explores making the proposed Beach Street/downtown station the western end of the train’s route, rather than Natural Bridges Drive. That would also decrease turnaround times, but require different infrastructure and adjustments to the operating plan. It could also change the total cost, but the report doesn’t specify whether it would be more or less expensive.
Slightly longer travel times
The draft report said that it would take about 45 to 60 minutes to travel end to end between the proposed Pajaro station at the south end of the line and the Natural Bridges station at the north end. The final report updates that estimate, but only by a little, widening the range from 45 to 70 minutes.
This travel time depends on the configuration of the track, station locations, how often trains meet and pass each other, and where the short passing tracks are eventually built.
Operating estimates get a 20% cushion for increased costs
The final report keeps the same expected annual operating costs per mile as the draft report, at $57.25 if directly operated by the RTC with its own employees and vehicles, and up to $68.94 if it contracts service out to a private company.
In the final report, the transit agency added a contingency of 20%, to account operating costs growing well beyond current projections due to Santa Cruz Metro labor agreements and the fact that hydrogen-fueled passenger trains are a novel technology still undergoing constant change.
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