Rail and Trail: a Commitment Worth the Cost
- Friends of the Rail and Trail
- Apr 10
- 3 min read
By Matt Farrell | Published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel
Much is being made of the recent estimate that bridge replacements along the community-owned Santa Cruz Branch Rail Line could cost $980,000 each, or close to $1 billion.
In the context of our daily lives, $1 billion certainly does sound like a lot. But in terms of transportation projects, it’s not an unusual amount. Examples abound of transportation projects that cost about $1 billion. Here are a few:
• The widening of Highway 1 from Soquel Drive to Freedom Boulevard.
• Just one tunnel for the BART extension project.
• Construction of a couple of new freeway interchanges.
The more important questions are what benefit do we get for this kind of money and where will the money come from?
In the case of the rail bridges, we get infrastructure that will last for generations and allow people to travel between Santa Cruz and Watsonville in about 40 minutes, bypassing cars stuck on the widened, billion-dollar Highway 1.
Money spent on a multi-generational project is just a better bang for our buck. The rail and trail is a legacy project that will last several lifetimes, improving the quality of life for our grandchildren and great grandchildren.
One of the reasons these price estimates seem so breathtaking is the worry about how we will pay for it. Our community doesn’t have $1 billion laying around, that’s for sure. Luckily that’s not how big transportation projects are funded. For rail projects, such as ours, the federal government typically provides about 80% of the funding. The state usually kicks in about 5-15%. This means that locally we’ll only have to contribute a small percentage of the total cost for the project.
Why would the feds commit so much to rail infrastructure? Because they know it’s good for business, it’s good for the environment, it’s good for residents’ quality of life. And, despite the uncertainty in Washington right now, we can look to the past Trump administration for a clue. They allocated more to rail funding than did the previous Obama administration.
Though public discourse about this project is heated, the rail and trail is a popular project. Recent elections and polling have shown that 70-80% of locals want to see both the rail and the trail added to our transportation options. The planning work being conducted by the professionals at the RTC is being done out of respect for local voters and at the direction of our elected representatives.
It’s good the Sentinel Editorial Board agrees that completing the trail should be a priority. Parts of the trail are indeed finished. An important new section in Santa Cruz is about to be opened to the public. And construction is well underway on other segments. Much has been designed and is fully funded. The fastest way to complete the trail is to keep building the project as planned. We are getting a world class trail and it’s happening right now.
We have a priceless resource in our Santa Cruz Branch Rail Line. We the public already own it. It’s providing our community with a trail, while also showing the way forward to zero-emissions rail transit service that will provide an alternative to gridlocked traffic for commuters.
Building modern infrastructure for active transportation and public transit is a major investment, but it is money well spent for future generations.
Matt Farrell is chair of FORT (Santa Cruz County Friends of the Rail and Trail).
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