I tried to understand the rail trail controversy so you wouldn’t have to

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In the Star Trek universe, the Borg are a “… mechanically enhanced, hive-mind collective of organic cyborgs known for their relentless assimilation of other species and technologies in pursuit of their own perfection.”

And because they exist only in fiction, I was quite surprised last year when I noticed one of their giant cube-shaped spaceships had landed in downtown Santa Cruz on the corner of Pacific Avenue and Laurel Street where the Taco Bell used to be.

Turns out it was only a massive (by Santa Cruz standards) building under construction.

Imagine my relief.  

Now there are so many colossal Borg cubes in various phases of construction in that part of downtown that middle Front Street has been dubbed “The Canyon.” And more are planned.

I’ll admit it’s jarring to see this transformation come to our once-sleepy little beach town. But all these daunting structures will (in theory) create more housing (a huge issue) and hey, progress marches on. The Front Street Canyon is also going to include a new Metro station for buses, and that’s great because public transportation helps to mitigate another big issue we face in Santa Cruz County: traffic.

MORE RAIL & TRAIL: Lookout news coverage | Community Voices opinion

Which brings me to the other public transit project touted to (some day) assist with that very problem: The rail trail. The passenger train from Watsonville to Davenport on the defunct coastal Santa Cruz Branch Rail Line, which will include a trail for walking/biking right alongside. 

You might have heard of it.

And if you have, you likely know how divided people are on the subject. Like, pretty gosh darn divided.

I’ve been working on this article for months, seeking conversations with various pro-train and no-train organizations, engaging in lively discussions online, all in an attempt to sift through the noise and really understand this extremely complex and contentious issue.

Here are the first things I learned:

If you support the train, you clearly champion egregious taxation to fund bloated, unrealistic government boondoggles. Because you want to force users of a trail to be mere feet from an active railroad, you hate peace, tranquility, bicycles, exercise, anyone who walks their dog (also the dog) and are shamelessly virtue-signaling your undying support of public transportation to hide the fact that you’re really just a nostalgia-addicted train-geek craving a bygone era.

If you do not support the train, you are a self-centered, elitist, effete snob who values personal recreation over working-class folks having affordable, reliable public transportation. You love gas-guzzling cars, traffic jams, and obviously welcome civilization-destroying climate change. You hate the environment, trains, Thomas the Train, Roaring Camp, and have no respect for history (because the railroads built this nation, doggone it).

So there’s that.

But here are some of the more practical realities I discovered during my exhaustive research, the nuts-and-bolts “facts” of the controversy if you will:

The California Coastal Commission will never approve all the massive construction required for a regular commuter train to run on the Santa Cruz Branch Line. Also the Coastal Commission will totally approve it because they’ll just rubber-stamp whatever the Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) decides.

There is absolutely not enough money ($4.3 billion price tag at last count) out there to pay for this. Also all the money to pay for this is absolutely out there.

Railbanking (whereby the tracks are removed but the easements and right-of-ways enjoyed by the line are preserved) is a relatively straightforward process that will happen no matter what because the existing tracks are outdated and need to get pulled up either way. Also railbanking is an insanely complicated process that may never happen at all.

Moot point though, because in 2022 Santa Cruz voters rightly rejected the destructive, anti-train railbanking concept. Also in 2022 voters were duped into voting against something that makes perfect sense, thanks to a vicious disinformation campaign fueled by the pro-train lobby.

The train will mostly serve blue-collar folks who live in Watsonville. Also it will mostly serve more affluent commuters and tourists.

The train will for sure help alleviate traffic along the Highway 1 corridor. Also the train won’t do diddly squat to help alleviate traffic along the Highway 1 corridor.

I could go on, but bottom line: A functioning, effective commuter train on the old Santa Cruz Branch Line is a totally realistic goal. Also: A functioning, effective commuter train on the Santa Cruz Branch Line is an absurd fantasy and as much a piece of fiction as the Borg are.

I hope that clears it up for you.

Full disclosure: I was warned not to write about this. Like, don’t even chime in.

I was told by one person I was consulting with that I was “out of my league” and “risking crucifixion” if I went forward with an earlier draft of this article written back when I still innocently believed I had a prayer of grasping it all. 

My reply: Yes, I’m totally out of my league, which is where I think a lot of people find themselves when trying to wrap their brains around all the disparate parts of this issue. As such, they often just glaze over and form an opinion based on a sound bite, or some deeply held adjacent belief (love of trains, convinced public transit will save the planet, convinced only bicycles will save the planet, believe big government projects are always a huge waste of money, etc.) while the actual realities and practicalities of our specific situation remain fuzzy.

So I dove in with the hope of distilling it down and laying it out for anyone who doesn’t have the bandwidth to immerse in the complexities 

Well, clearly that ain’t happening. The convoluted layers of regulation and bureaucracy and politics are so gargantuan that I actually came away feeling more boggled.

But I still have an opinion. And at the risk of being crucified, I’m going to express it. Here goes:

There’s only one place where the opposing sides of this argument connect: Having a trail. Not just a place to recreate, but a dedicated transportation corridor for all things human-powered and nothing more motorized than e-bikes. That everyone agrees on.

And we know how well it works: Where the trail has already been built on the Westside of Santa Cruz (an easy section because there’s lots of room) is a bustling corridor of humans on foot and on bikes, of dogs being walked, kids in strollers, all the things.

It’s like concept art for idealized urban planning brought to life.

Meanwhile, the unused rail bed beside it is a weed garden, awaiting the vast majority of $4 billion to … magically appear, I guess?

This would be for a single train line that barely skirts the far edge of the major commercial centers on 41st Avenue, doesn’t go anywhere near UC Santa Cruz or Dominican Hospital (and its many adjacent medical offices) and misses downtown Santa Cruz altogether.  

Not a very functional route for a modern, multibillion-dollar public transit project. 

And that’s not surprising: The railroad was built in the 1800s to connect Pajaro to Santa Cruz, where it meandered through the countryside with stops at what were then booming little settlements (Aptos, Camp Capitola, etc.) on its way up the coast. It was a path that made perfect sense at the time; just one extraordinarily ill-suited for a commuter train given the lay of the land today. 

So yeah, no, I can’t buy into the rail at this point. That’s an insane amount of money (over a billion alone just to rebuild/replace 28 bridges) for something no study can definitively show will be good at doing the thing it’s supposed to do.

I like trains, too. But c’mon. 

If public transportation is the goal, you can buy a whole lot of electric (or natural gas or hydrogen or hemp-powered or whatever) clean-energy buses for way less than $4 billion. Plus I hear there’s a cool new Metro station being constructed in the Front Street Canyon right next to the Borg cubes.

My vote: Bank the rail and build the trail.

Build the rest of the trail on the rail bed now, utilizing the existing trestles and bridges, all for a fraction of the cost while still preserving the potential of a train happening sometime in the future.

Because maybe in the future the situation will change. Perhaps some unforeseen technological/economic/demographic breakthrough/transformation/shift will occur that makes a Santa Cruz Branch Line commuter train-viable. 

Maybe someday all the bridges can be inexpensively rebuilt by autonomous AI robots using recycled stainless steel from unsold Tesla Cybertrucks. 

Or something.

Point being: If it ever actually makes sense, then yeah. Absolutely. Do the train.

In the meantime, we could have one of the nicest trails in the state.

Daniel DeLong would like it known that if any of the roughly 50% who don’t want him crucified after reading this article would like to make “Bank the Rail – Build the Trail” bumper stickers, he’ll buy one.