Letter to the editor: Will Santa Cruzans really ditch their Teslas to ride the rail?

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To the editor:

I just don’t get it.

I’ve lived in Santa Cruz for 55 years, run an iconic business (India Joze) for most of that time, seen seismic changes in the demographics and outlook around here. I hope I was in touch with the needs and outlook of my broad clientele.

I even worked for a furniture company, long gone, that depended on rail transport for its business model, and had a mother who heaved a sigh of relief when the Davenport cement plant heavily using that service finally shut down.

So I just can’t understand how anyone, much less the wise voice of the Santa Cruz electorate, can seriously propose that any conceivable rail line will help meet our ongoing transportation needs.

Let’s completely set aside the destructive environmental costs and the eye-watering and escalating financial costs of any system, both to build and to run.

Passenger service to ... Davenport? To ... Watsonville? We are going to somehow subsidize the huddled masses yearning to ... what? Go to a wine tasting? Attend an Open Studio? The new downtowners who need to make $80,000 per year to live in the low-income housing, but don’t have parking, are going to commute to IT jobs in Freedom? Am I so completely out of touch to miss the hordes of potential riders around here waiting to ditch their Teslas and save the world?

All I can figure out is that the new rounds of expensive studies to assess the viability of local rail are themselves the goal; the consultancy class paying themselves richly to yet again realize that the boondoggle just doesn’t make sense. Followed no doubt by another round of concerned citizens berating us all for not CARING about climate change. And more expensive studies.

I guess it all makes some kind of political sense, help inoculate us against Trump voters or something.

Jozseph Schultz
India Joze
Happy Valley