Specter of Measure D continues to haunt Santa Cruz County’s plans for passenger rail

It will be two years this June since voters took to the polls to decide the fate of a passenger rail and paved trail in Santa Cruz County. 

Measure D, which sought to scrap plans for a train and exclusively pursue a paved bike and walking path on the Santa Cruz Branch Rail Line, lost in blowout fashion. More than 70% of voters sided with keeping language in the county’s general plan that included planning for a potential passenger train service on the 32 miles of the branch line that winds from Watsonville to Davenport.

So, with such decisive voting results, the widespread disagreement and polarization came to an end.

Except — it didn’t. 

Nearly two years after the June 2022 vote, many in the community remain split on how to proceed with the rail, the trail, and whether or not the plan will even work as the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) sets off on the near decade-long path toward a hopeful 2032 groundbreaking, finally putting local passenger rail service in sight, even if you still have to squint to see it. 

The issue has also featured in the current election campaign, given that all county supervisors are automatically appointed to the RTC board that will ultimately help shape how the project moves forward over the next four years.

The RTC kicked off public input sessions last week, some of the first since a more specific project schedule and timeline has been made public. Throughout the next year, the RTC will go through multiple rounds of public input sessions on things like facility locations, vehicle types and environmental impacts. The agency is hoping to complete preliminary engineering and a full environmental analysis by 2027 and enter the final design stage by 2028 to prepare for 2032 construction.

Last week’s two public meetings, one in Watsonville and one in Live Oak, each drew about 30 community members and transit professionals. 

Many of the attendees said they were happy to see a clearer path toward passenger rail, and cited connectivity, carbon emission reduction and transit equity as reasons to be excited.

“We’ve been big advocates for rail for a long time now,” said Karell Reader, who lives in Corralitos with her husband, Phil. “It’s fun to finally see it sort of coming to fruition.”

Phil Reader commutes to Felton, which is already a lengthy trek without traffic. It sometimes takes him more than two hours in rush hour to get from work back home to Corralitos. The couple equated Freedom Boulevard at 7:30 a.m. to a parking lot, and said that passenger rail would both connect the two ends of the county better than ever, and particularly help students in South County access Cabrillo College and UC Santa Cruz more easily.

“Both [rail and trail] would be amazing, we need to get away from our cars for sure,” said Watsonville resident Peter Howley. “Commutes could be easier, and we can get out and use our legs; there are layers of good.”

The community meetings, however, also highlighted the fact that passenger rail still faces plenty of opposition long after Measure D. 

Some community members said they are concerned about the project’s cost – a 2020 report pegged the price tag of a commuter rail line at about $478 million, according to Santa Cruz Local. RTC spokesperson Shannon Munz said the agency doesn’t have a current preliminary cost estimate for the project and that the work now underway will likely bring clarity to that figure.

Rail skeptics also say they worry that the train might not get enough riders to make the massive effort and tree and landscaping removal worthwhile, and that the trail alone could adequately connect communities and improve traffic on the highway.

“I think it’ll be quite environmentally destructive,” Aptos resident Johanna Lighthill said. “I walk the corridor all the time, and in Segment 11 [between 17th Avenue and State Park Drive] it’s very forested, and I’m not sure how many trees would have to be taken out.”

She added that she believes running the train directly adjacent to the trail could be unsafe if people using the trail are not separated enough from the running train: “I just don’t think that [both rail and trail] are going to fit. I used to support the rail, and then I walked the tracks and thought there’s just no way.”

Lighthill said that while she looks forward to further studies on specifics like ridership estimates and environmental impact, she is concerned that a train would not draw the level of ridership to make the project worthwhile, a sentiment Live Oak resident Gail Davis said she shares. 

Davis added that there is too much uncertainty around how riders would navigate from the drop-off point to their destination. “How would they get off the train and to their workplace? If they’re working all the way in Scotts Valley or something like that, that’s not easy,” she said. 

Completing the trail alone could provide a workaround to Highway 1 traffic, boost the tourist economy and connect the county’s communities — especially in such an active region that prioritizes outdoor activities, she contended: “I think that if we had a trail for bicycles and pedestrians that went all the way around the bay, that would be spectacular.”

Live Oak resident Ryan Sarnataro, too, said he is concerned about the “environmental destruction” needed to fit both a train and a trail in the same corridor. He thinks that railbanking — preserving railroad rights-of-way for possible future use — would have been the right thing to do, and calls it a “tragedy” that it did not unfold that way.

“If at some future time, people want the train more than they love the trail, they would be able to find the money and put it in,” he said. “In my perfect world, I’d say let’s not do something that is going to change the environment forever for a train that might never come.”

The ghost of Measure D has also reared its head in the March primary election, most notably in the race for District 1 county supervisor. There, incumbent Manu Koenig, the former executive director of Measure D sponsor Santa Cruz Greenway, is battling challenger Lani Faulkner, founder of pro-transit group Equity Transit.

In a Lookout election forum at Hotel Paradox earlier this month, Koenig acknowledged that Measure D’s resounding defeat “did help bring a certain amount of clarity to how to move forward on this issue.” 

Koenig said he remains concerned about the cost to build passenger rail in Santa Cruz County and about California’s ability to ever make its vision of high-speed rail a reality. But, he added, since Measure D failed in 2022, he has worked to support passenger rail, including lobbying in Sacramento for more state funding. “Look, if I wanted to hold up the rail trail, I could have done way more,” he said. 

Faulkner, however, has accused Koenig of still being seen as a rail opponent and said that when it comes to planning how to dole out state funds, California lawmakers continue to view Santa Cruz County’s commitment to building commuter train service with skepticism.

Passenger rail “is still a question because you don’t have a champion really standing behind it,” she said. “We don’t have a champion in that regard in terms of the incumbent. He is not championing that cause.”

Echoes of Measure D have also been heard on the RTC board, where last May, Koenig was among three board members to vote against accepting an environmental report on a 2.5-mile stretch of the trail from the Santa Cruz Wharf through 17th Avenue in Live Oak. 

The report favored an “ultimate” trail option that would construct a trail next to the existing tracks. Some rail opponents have pushed for an “interim” trail option that would temporarily remove the tracks to make way for a trail, something rail supporters say will make it more expensive and legally challenging to eventually build a train line. 

“I’ve been on RTC for maybe two years now and I can’t say that there’s been a single agenda item related to the rail trail that doesn’t kind of evolve into an entire debate about every single aspect of this project from beginning to end,” Kristen Brown, now Capitola’s mayor and current RTC chair, told that May RTC meeting, according to a report from the Santa Cruz Sentinel. 

Brown is now running to replace outgoing District 2 Supervisor Zach Friend and told a Lookout candidate forum earlier this month that her opinions on the project “have evolved over time.” She said she currently supports both a trail and a future of “clean, electric passenger rail.”

Nancy Faulstich, director of Regeneración – Pajaro Valley Climate Action, attended the Watsonville public information session last week and said she has been a big proponent of alternative transportation for many years. 

While she acknowledged that there are many service questions that need to be answered, such as cost to use the train and how to get from stations to destinations, the benefits of such a project are vital to the planet’s future.

“It would have to be accessible, convenient, affordable, and we’d need to figure out shuttle options to get to the stations and make sure it can carry lots of bikes,” Faulstich said. “But we’re not going to have a livable planet if we don’t do whatever it takes to get people to stop burning fuel, so if we could make the train free, that would be even better.”

Faulstich called rail opponents’ argument that the project is too expensive “bogus,” and said she believes that the longer the project is delayed, the more expensive it will ultimately be: “The arguments I hear about it being too expensive tend to come from wealthier people who are the ones burning way more emissions and are causing the problem to begin with.”

Nebraska-based engineering consultant firm HDR, Inc. has been hired to create a conceptual report for the project this year, which will include environmental review and concepts for project aspects like travel times, vehicle types that might run on the rail, facility locations and track designs. 

HDR Vice President Mark McLaren said it’s no secret that there is a lot of work to be done to answer questions the Santa Cruz County community still has.

“Things like how often the train is going to run, what it’s going to cost to operate, how many trains will be on the line, and where the money is coming from?” he said. “This phase is focused on understanding what the community wants to know and what it is concerned about. We’re going to document all of those things and address them as the project comes together.”

Munz said that given the diversity of opinions in the community — and strong ones at that — it is going to be important for the RTC to continue hosting public input sessions throughout 2024 and beyond.

Last week’s public meetings were only the beginning, she said, and future public input sessions will begin diving into the even more complex and consequential issues of the path forward, like station locations, vehicle types and travel times. Input sessions on those aspects will likely be sometime in midsummer, said Munz: “Those things are really going to make a difference to people who are going to ride the train, so that’s where we really need to make sure we’re getting in touch with people.”

Creating a project that incorporates community input and tangible benefits is vital for the future of passenger rail, said RTC senior transportation engineer Sarah Christensen, given the arduous path to funding the transit commission needs to pursue.

“When you have an expensive project like this, you’re going to need grants from the federal and state government, and our project needs to be competitive enough to get those grants,” she said. “We’re competing against every region in California, and then at the federal level, we’re competing against every other rail project in the nation.”

As the region sets out on that long path, proponents see it as an opportunity to change for the better, even if that’s difficult to imagine in a place many have called home for decades. “Nobody likes change, and it’s easy to reminisce about the way things were, but that’s gone,” said Howley.

Some of those currently against rail say they are keeping an open mind.

“I think [supporters] really do think it’ll be well used, and if it is, then I’m wrong and that would be great,” said Davis, the Live Oak resident. “I’m willing to be wrong.”

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