In 2002, over 20 years ago, the Santa Cruz County Friends of the Rail & Trail was established with the mission of manifesting a paved pedestrian and bike trail alongside passenger rail service on our existing Santa Cruz Branch Rail Line (SCBRL). This work has been funded by the local community and carried forward by hundreds of ordinary citizen volunteers. Since 2002 some amazing things have been accomplished, and yet there remains much to do.

This coming June we will all have the opportunity to vote for continuing our progress or obstruction. We urge you to vote NO on the deceptive Measure D 'Greenway' ballot initiative.  

The Transportation Solutions Defense and Education Fund, known as TRANSDEF, is a non-profit environmental organization created by transit activists to advocate for better solutions to transportation, land use and air quality problems in the San Francisco Bay Area. TRANSDEF promotes cost-effective transit, Smart Growth, and market-based pricing as fiscally and environmentally preferable responses to traffic congestion.  These strategies represent a major departure from the prevailing policy climate of suburban sprawl, ever-widening highways and overwhelming dependence on the private automobile. TRANSDEF is especially focused on transportation solutions that reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases that cause climate change.

TRANSDEF read the County Staff report analyzing the Greenway ballot measure and found it to be woefully inadequate. Here is their letter to the Board of Supervisors pointing out the flaws and omissions in the staff report, and the serious unrecognized harms that the Greenway ballot initiative would cause for Santa Cruz County. 

6. The Report should have indicated that the Initiative would interfere with Plan Policy 3.1.1: "Land Use Patterns (Jobs/Housing Balance): ​

The February 3 Regional Transportation Commission meeting turned into a proxy battle surrounding the June “trail only” Greenway ballot initiative. RTC staff presented information about how adverse abandonment of the Felton line (owned by Roaring Camp) could clear the way legally for them to abandon and tear out tracks on the Santa Cruz Branch line. Not surprisingly, the public has been outraged by this suggestion. Over 6,000 emails were sent to the RTC opposing this effort to destroy both our transit future and Roaring Camp, a beloved local woman-owned business.  
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No vote on rail was scheduled or taken. However, in a stunning new twist, at this meeting during the oral staff presentation on a different item, RTC planning staff member Sarah Christiansen revealed a proposal to completely remove the two rail bridges that cross Highway 1 in Aptos and replace them only with bike-and-pedestrian bridges. The stated goal of this staff proposal was to increase the competitiveness for grant applications for the highway-widening project. Strikingly, this proposal was not included in the written staff report. Needless to say, leaving out such a critical element of the proposal from the written record in the public packet contradicts RTC policy, as well as requirements for transparency in government. 

New Trail-Only Policy with No Public Process 
This new staff proposal to entirely scrap the rail bridges represents a dramatic shift in both the highway widening project plans and rail corridor project plans, without any public process or acknowledgement. If you are as dismayed at this subversion of good governance and good policy as we are, you can click here to write the commissioners. The next opportunity to let them know in person is the Transportation Policy Workshop on February 17th. Attend this meeting and help put pressure on the RTC. Remind them that both the Unified Corridor study and the Transportation Corridor Alternatives Analysis study settled on rail transit and trail together as the best use of the corridor. Ask them if they intend to abandon the public process or to move forward with the plan of record. Sacrificing the publicly owned rail line to reduce costs for the highway widening project is unacceptable and outrageous. 

Adverse Abandonment on the Felton Line?
 Why was Roaring Camp and Adverse Abandonment of the Felton Line on the RTC agenda? RTC Executive Director Guy Preston summarized it in the very last sentence of his 13-page report to the Commission: 
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"...RTC’s ability to railbank [on the Santa Cruz Branch Line] could still be stopped by the opposition of [Roaring Camp, as] a potential stranded line..."

Mr. Preston seems to be using the threat of adverse abandonment to pressure Roaring Camp to agree to permit railbanking on the Santa Cruz Branch Line, or else be punished by the RTC with loss of the Felton Line. It's disturbing to see our Regional Transportation Commission engaged in this kind of behavior. 

Highway Widening and the Rail Line
The RTC highway-widening project currently requires the rail bridges that cross the highway to be replaced with longer ones that can span the newly widened highway. You can see the project description on the RTC website ​here. As stated in the project description, so long as the Santa Cruz Branch Line remains active, the rail bridges must be preserved or replaced. In order to avoid this bridge-replacement cost, this new staff proposal is to file for Abandonment on the Santa Cruz Branch Line, and then to Railbank the line to clear the way for demolishing the bridges. However, Roaring Camp could block abandonment of the Santa Cruz Line. To prevent Roaring Camp from blocking abandonment on the Santa Cruz line, Executive Director Preston seems to be threatening them with Adverse Abandonment of the Felton line. If successful, Adverse Abandonment would make Roaring Camp powerless to oppose the Santa Cruz Branch Line abandonment. Either way, if the Santa Cruz Branch Line were abandoned, Roaring Camp would lose their connection to the national rail network and be unable to bring their locomotives and other rail equipment into their rail yard. Abandonment would also strip the Felton Line of federal protection and leave it to the whims of local control. To add extra intimidation, Brian Peoples, the former organizer and treasurer for Commissioner Koenig’s election campaign PAC, has a publicly stated goal of electing Supervisors in Districts 3 and 4 who will support demolishing the Felton Branch Line, paving it, and forcing Roaring Camp to convert to “rubber-wheeled” vehicles. 

Aside from the implications for Roaring Camp, removal of the rail bridges without replacing them would obviously be devastating for the future of rail transit in Santa Cruz County. If the highway widening project is to proceed, funding to replace the rail bridges must be included in the project budget. We can't allow Santa Cruz County to proceed down the same path that Los Angeles and so many other communities in the USA did in the 50s. Tearing out the publicly owned tracks and widening freeways is not the way forward for a healthy and sustainable community. 

Take Action
Let’s keep the pressure on the RTC to protect, restore and put our rail lines back in service to the community. click here to write the commissioners. Attend the Transportation Policy Workshop on February 17th and tell them you want both rail and trail, and you want them to respect the public process.

Public Engagement at the RTC Meeting
Commissioner Sandy Brown reported receiving more than 6000 emails supporting Roaring Camp and opposing the RTC staff proposal for Adverse Abandonment of their Felton Branch Line, including this one from the San Lorenzo Valley fire chiefs. Here is a quote from their open letter to the RTC:

"We write you today to urge you not to proceed with any efforts to abandon freight service on the Felton Branch Rail Line or the Santa Cruz Branch Rail Line. These rail lines ensure there is a rail connection for Santa Cruz County and the rest of California, which may be critical in providing an essential route to the San Lorenzo Valley and other areas during future fire emergencies related to climate change, severe drought and catastrophic wildfires."
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The vast majority of public comment was devoted to outrage over the RTC’s threat to force abandonment of the Felton Brach Line. The discomfort of the RTC Commissioners was evident. However, although they asked Mr. Preston to continue negotiating with Roaring Camp, the commission did not commit to preserving the rail lines. 
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RTC Commissioner Shiffrin on Greenway
The Greenway ballot initiative is widely acknowledged to be deceptive. At the RTC meeting, Commissioner Shiffrin had some great comments on what the initiative would actually do. You can view a transcription of his remarks at the California Local online news service here: https://californialocal.com/localnews/santa-cruz/ca/article/show/3010/3010-transcript-of-andy-shiffin-position-on-coastal-rail-trail/
Here is a small excerpt from his remarks: 

"Despite the misleading rhetoric, if the freight easement is abandoned, Greenway supporters will undoubtedly advocate that the rail tracks be removed. And if they succeed, the likelihood of rail service ever returning between Santa Cruz and Watsonville is zero to none."

Guest Post by Paul Schoellhamer 

Railbanking is a real thing, but some of the claims being made about it here in Santa Cruz County have no basis in reality.

Railbanking was a legal sleight-of-hand (and I mean that in a good way) that was created by Congress in 1983 to solve a very specific problem: flaws in some railroad land deeds were making it difficult for some of those properties to be converted by local governments into recreational trails.

In that purpose, Congress’s 1983 railbanking provision has mostly been a success: a lot of abandoned rail rights-of-way have been turned into recreational trails. Across the U.S. railbanking has, in 37 years and over 300 specific projects, facilitated the conversion of roughly 6000 miles of rail right-of-way. And those have been all kinds of conversions: trails adjacent to tracks and trails in place of tracks, trails that were paved or not paved but improved or that offered no improvements at all. (In a few cases the rail-right-of-way was just left as a place to cross-country ski in winter – snowfall being the only improvement.) We have a lot of real world experience with railbanking.

Greenway now argues that railbanking can do something very specific here in Santa Cruz County: we can with railbanking remove the rail line entirely and pave it over with asphalt or concrete and then at some point in the future we can reverse course, tear up all that pavement, rebuild the rail line, and offer some type of electric light rail transit service. The question before us is: Is that a realistic possibility we would be leaving for our kids and grandkids? Or are we being misled into a dead-end?

We could have a theoretical debate about what could or could not happen in a distant future, but we don’t need to. We have 37 years and roughly 6000 miles of real world experience with railbanking. That real world experience tells us volumes about what railbanking realistically can and cannot do.

And here is what all that real world experience is telling us: as much as railbanking has accomplished over all those years and all those miles, it has NEVER done what Greenway says it can do here in Santa Cruz County. To be specific, Greenway claims that railbanking would make it a realistic possibility that we could remove the rail line entirely and pave it over with asphalt or concrete, and then many years later decide to rip it all up and rebuild the rail line -- and that has NEVER happened in the entire history of railbanking.

The point is simply this: Greenway should be honest with the public. Greenway can advocate tearing up the tracks if they want to, but they should stop holding out to the public the unrealistic claim that under their proposal throwing around the word “railbanking” has any realistic chance of bringing back rail service in the future. Tear it up and pave it over and it very likely is gone forever -- that’s what honesty looks like.

That being the case, the question becomes: Should we sitting here in 2022 be making a decision for 10 or 20 or 30 years from now, when we have (let’s face it) very limited ability to predict what that world will look like then? Or should we in fairness leave that decision to be made by those living in that world, including our kids and grandkids?

Paul Schoellhamer worked for many years as legislative staff in the US House of Representatives, focusing on transportation issues. He now lives in South County.

Modern transportation experts agree on a few things:

• Providing a robust public transit system is the only way to transform communities into more equitable, more sustainable and more economically vibrant places benefitting everyone.
• Innovative new and equitable funding sources are required. Traditional funding sources such as gas and sales taxes are both unfair to low-income community members and unlikely to provide enough funding to support a truly robust and functional public transit system.  

These principles also apply in Santa Cruz County.  Right now, levels of traffic congestion and commute times are a nightmare. GHG emissions from transportation account for the majority of our emissions and continue to rise. People and the planet are suffering. We need a more robust public transit system. 

Adding passenger rail transit to our bus system will increase county-wide use of public transit from 13,700 trips to 34,200 trips every single day according to the RTC’s recent Transit Corridor Alternatives Analysis (TCAA)[1].  That is a 150% increase in public transit ridership county wide. The data is in, and as a result, the county Regional Transportation Commission has selected electric passenger rail as the Locally Preferred Alternative for adding public transit to the rail corridor.

To support this 150% increase in public transit ridership, local funds will be needed to match available state and federal funding. The RTC’s draft TCAA Business Plan states that besides a traditional sales tax, other sources of local funds include “funds from vehicle levy or registration fees, local fuel tax, property tax, income tax, transient occupancy tax, student fees, vehicle miles traveled charges, and parking fees.”[2] What the Business Plan doesn’t say is how to move forward. 

Solutions
Proactive communities are leading the way in finding the equitable “how” to fund expansions of public transit. One of the most successful strategies is the “collaborative” model utilized by the City of Portland in its Pricing Options for Equitable Mobility (POEM) project, grounded in a commitment to Transportation Justice. 

​One of the most amazing things about Portland's community-wide effort is that its final report outlines seven near-term and three long-term funding strategies and of these strategies, none involves a sales tax. It should come as no surprise; the final report was unanimously adopted by the Portland City Council with direction to staff to implement the recommendations.
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The benefits of improving our public transportation system are so numerous, it is short-sighted and unjust to delay finding the funding to transform our transportation system into the more equitable, sustainable and economically just system we want and need. Let’s take advantage of the tremendously creative energy in our community and go to work on a “POEM” project of our own.

Dear Supervisor McPherson and members of the SCCRTC:

We write you today to urge you not to proceed with any efforts to abandon freight service on the Felton Branch Rail Line or the Santa Cruz Branch Rail Line. These rail lines ensure there is a rail connection for Santa Cruz County and the rest of California, which may be critical in providing an essential route to the San Lorenzo Valley and other areas during future fire emergencies related to climate change, severe drought and catastrophic wildfires.

New technologies and innovative solutions to climate-driven emergencies are in development in California and beyond. For example, fire trains are beginning to see use to help fight major wildfires. This was the case in Northern California during the 2021 Dixie Fire. Fire trains use water and retardant, hauled by rail in tanker cars. The trains also include firefighting professionals who battle wildfires from the train, helping to protect watersheds and critical infrastructure.

Freight use abandonment of either rail line will lead to railbanking, which would result in tearing out the tracks, thus eliminating a potentially critical tool in the years ahead as we learn to adapt to the new realities of climate change. 

As you may be aware, there are areas of the Santa Cruz Mountains that are only accessed via the rail line, such as within Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park and the Pogonip open space area. 

Coupled with new technologies, such as fire trains that are under study in California, is major new funding for wildfire prevention and protection that is being developed by both the state and federal governments. It is important for Santa Cruz County to maximize options for future resources and to not get left behind in funding and policy decisions that could potentially benefit our region.

We urge you to maintain the Felton Branch Rail Line and the Santa Cruz Branch Rail Line as critical infrastructure for our community.

Sincerely,

Robert Gray, Fire Chief, Felton Fire District
Dan Walters, Fire Chief, Zayante Fire District
Stacie Brownlee, Fire Chief, Ben Lomond Fire District
Mark Bingham, Fire Chief, Boulder Creek Fire District
Jim Anderson, Vice Chair, Felton Fire District
Bob Locatelli, Fire Director, Boulder Creek Fire District
Sam Robustelli, Fire Director, Boulder Creek Fire District

Last week during the January RTC meeting, it became clear that the rumors we had heard about the RTC seeking “adverse abandonment” were true. Adverse abandonment means that the one calling for it wants to take away rail rights from users of a rail line.

​What surprised us the most was which rail line the RTC was attacking first. The RTC has confirmed that in order to pave the way to abandon and railbank the Santa Cruz Branch Rail Line, the RTC will be discussing an adverse abandonment of the Felton Branch Rail Line which is wholly owned by Roaring Camp Railroads.

Why is the RTC making such hostile moves?

The RTC staff has released a statement claiming they are making this move in order to save money on rail bridges and that Roaring Camp will still be able to operate if their branch line were abandoned. This is an inaccurate analysis and a mischaracterization of what this adverse action will actually do to our community as a whole and Roaring Camp in particular. Roaring Camp is rightly outraged at this attack (you can read their response here) as are we. 

We firmly oppose abandoning our rail lines.

Here’s why:

1.  We support Roaring Camp’s right to operate and agree that abandonment of the Felton and Santa Cruz to Watsonville rail lines will hurt our local economy and our mobility options.
2. We believe it is a mistake to downgrade our rail lines and bridges below freight standards.

In the end, it is always better to invest in infrastructure for our future. Our mission is to advocate for both electric passenger rail and the 32 mile rail trail in the existing active freight corridor. Keeping our rail lines in the national system allows for stronger infrastructure for all uses, including emergency evacuations. Building load-limited bridges is not in our best interest. 

We Do Not Support Abandonment

At the end of the day, we are a community, we need to come together not just to build the right systems and infrastructure that serve everyone, but also to support our local industries. Businesses like Roaring Camp are the heart of Santa Cruz County. 

Please write to the RTC commissioners and let them know you do not support abandonment of either the FELTON or SANTA CRUZ BRANCH LINE. Furthermore, please mention the importance of keeping our lines to freight standard. We want electric passenger service that’s quiet and seamless in our community, but we also want bridges that are capable of supporting firefighting trains and any other needed services for our community now and in the future.

Spanning two weekends — one each in Watsonville and Santa Cruz — the clean-energy, all-electric light rail vehicle gave the community a tangible example of what car-free travel could be like in the region.

“What an amazing way to see Santa Cruz! Pretty stoked to see some alternative clean energy transportation,” Aaron Bistrin of Santa Cruz shared on Instagram, representing a sentiment echoed by many other users of Instagram, Facebook, Reddit and Twitter.

More than 2,000 people took rides on the Coast Futura, including families, people with limited mobility and local elected officials. The streetcar demonstration was produced with support from a collaboration that included about 120 local volunteers, Roaring Camp Railroads and TIG/m, which manufactures the streetcar.

“We are at an exciting time here with this rail demo, addressing both climate change and the public transit equity crisis. Every segment of our community benefits from a robust, zero-emission public transit system that provides access to jobs, medical care, education, cultural events, shopping and connecting with friends.”
— Lani Faulkner, Coast Futura volunteer

The demonstration event began in Watsonville with a 5.2-mile out-and-back trip that included expansive views of agricultural land, rolling under a Highway 1 overpass and taking in rarely seen vistas in remote areas of Watsonville Slough.

In Santa Cruz, the Coast Futura departed from the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, traversing the San Lorenzo River Trestle as it headed out on a 7-mile round-trip ride across the Santa Cruz Harbor, past Simpkins Swim Center, to the Capitola Bluffs and back. The streetcar quietly passed through numerous neighborhoods, past parks and schools. Despite running at much slower speeds than the vehicle is capable of, due to the need for upgrades to the rail tracks, afternoon riders reached Capitola in half the time of driving while gliding by traffic.
In total, the Coast Futura demonstration event included 68 runs over six days, covering 433 miles.

“Over the last couple days we’ve been able to ride and watch the demo train ‘cruz’ the Boardwalk to Capitola and back! We are incredibly impressed with all the passion, education, good energy, and overall community building vibe the leaders of Coast Futura have displayed. Thank you!”
— Joe Downie, Capitola resident via Instagram

The demonstration event ran on tracks that parallel sections of the Coastal Rail Trail in both Santa Cruz and Watsonville, illustrating how the rail corridor is wide enough to support rail service and a world-class bike and pedestrian path. A half-dozen sections of the Rail Trail are already completed or in progress.
The Santa Cruz Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) authorized the
demonstration as an opportunity for the public to see an example of a modern electric rail vehicle on two sections of the Santa Cruz Branch Rail Line track.

Earlier in 2021, following a comprehensive study, the RTC designated electric
passenger rail as the preferred alternative use of the publicly-owned rail corridor, envisioned to be established alongside a wide trail. The RTC’s conclusion was based on a “triple bottom line” focus on sustainability, including equity, environment and economy. This approach remains popular with the general public, as evidenced by the RTC’s public release of letters of support for rail transit it has received throughout 2021.

Though the Coast Futura demonstration was not a proposal for rail service, it was presented as an accessible, tangible concept intended to inspire a community discussion about the future of rail transit in Santa Cruz County. Organizers hope that discussion will include potential funding scenarios that could include state and federal funding, especially following the passage of President Biden’s bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

See the full story here: https://lookout.co/santacruz/coast-life/story/2021-11-12/clean-energy-coast-futura-rail-demo-met-with-excitement-hope-for-the-future

Over the past years despite negative messaging from public transportation opponents we continued to believe that Santa Cruz County residents favor improving public transportation and would support adding passenger rail. Now that the RTC has officially chosen clean-energy passenger rail as the Locally Preferred Alternative for transit in the rail corridor, and is developing a business plan, we thought it was important to hear from voters county-wide and to find out whether the public will support this plan. Today we’re writing to share the news with you. The results are in, and they blew us away. It turns out that when asked, 74% of active voters in Santa Cruz County support electric passenger rail service.

We knew that Santa Cruz County supports reducing pollution and that the  need for better transportation options is clear to everyone. Despite that, we were surprised by both the depth and breadth of this support. The results are overwhelmingly positive across all five Supervisorial Districts. Depending on the district, 68% to 86% of survey respondents said they are in favor of the plan to provide clean energy light rail between Watsonville and Santa Cruz. This county-wide result is a watershed moment for transportation planning in Santa Cruz County. 

The idea to tear out the track and replace them with only a trail is deeply unpopular, as is the notion of pausing rail service planning. Faced with a direct choice among continuing with the current plan for both the trail and passenger rail, continuing to build the trail but pausing the plan for passenger rail, or removing the tracks and converting the entire corridor to trail only, the survey found just 17% are in favor of tearing out the track and only 19% support a pause in planning. The majority of the county prefers continuing with the current plan for both trail and passenger rail.








Who Did the Research?
To conduct the survey, we chose California-based FM3 Research, a highly respected and independent public opinion research firm with a nearly 40-year track record of accurate, statistically valid research for non-profit organizations and local governments across the state and the U.S. A total of 618 interviews were conducted in mid-February. Participants were a randomly selected representative sample of our county’s active voters.  They were contacted via email and/or phone numbers provided by the Santa Cruz County Registrar of Voters. The composition of the sample aligned with the characteristics of local voters including political party, age, gender, race/ethnicity and Supervisorial District. According to FM3, a sample of this size is commonly used for accurate analysis of the opinions of residents in an area such as Santa Cruz County and is consistent with research the firm did in advance of the successful passage of Measure D in Santa Cruz County in 2016.

We’re so excited to share this news with you. We’re pleased to know that transforming public transportation in Santa Cruz County has such overwhelming public support. Thank you to our donors both large and small.  It was your support that enabled us to fund this research.

What’s Next?
Our 2021 mission is clear. We must step up our efforts to reach out to all the residents of the county and to share the Coast Connect vision for public transportation: building the Rail Trail, adding clean energy light rail, and improving neighborhood streets for biking and walking. 
We didn’t plan it out this way, but like a great transit connection, this good news synchronizes beautifully with our Spring Fundraising Challenge. This means that right now is a great time to celebrate the survey results and help us get ready for our 2021 effort by making a donation. If you would like to support our work, please click here and have your donation of any amount doubled until we reach our $40,000 match challenge. Thank you for your support!