What is preventing faster completion of the Coastal Rail Trail?

The primary obstacle to faster trail construction is the continued effort to redesign the project to remove rail infrastructure instead of implementing the Rail and Trail project voters supported and the County planned. The choice to pursue an untested legal strategy at the Surface Transportation Board (STB) for permission to tear out the tracks is causing a lengthy delay.  Resources would be more wisely focused on delivering both Rail and Trail. 

And from a transportation system point of view, it's important to remember that trains ARE cycling infrastructure. Where cycling paths are near trains, more people cycle and more people take the train.  The cycle paths help solve the first-mile last-mile challenge of public transit and trains extend a cyclist's range so we can use our bikes for more journeys. 

Friends of the Rail & Trail believes state grant funds may be lost if the project shifts to an Interim design for the reasons described above as well as those in the Grand Jury report. The Grand Jury Report  and  the RTC’s own peer review stated that the RTC would benefit greatly by collaborating and consulting with other more experienced regional rail and transit agencies.

1. What course of action would move the trail forward most quickly, and why?

The fastest path is to build the funded Rail Trail design wherever possible, preserve the tracks, and solve constrained locations individually, probably using the hybrid trail approach that was successfully used in Humboldt County, bringing the trail closer to the tracks as needed, and using flangeway fillers to make the tracks safe to cycle across. 

Taking out or burying the railroad tracks is not legally permissible. Efforts to do so will mire the project in a costly and time-consuming bureaucratic and legal mess with a likely negative outcome. Not only is this bad policy, it is impractical and a waste of the time and money that would be better spent on building the hybrid trail.

2. Which funding deadlines or grant requirements materially constrain the available options?

At this point all the proposed trail designs are over budget (ultimate, interim and hybrid).  The question is which design has the support of the voters, is the wisest use of our resources, and will ultimately serve our community the best.

The Active Transportation Program (ATP) grant assumes several parameters about length of the trail and a construction schedule.  Applying for exceptions, delays and changes in scope is a standard process when projects run over budget.

3. How do you understand the schedule, cost, feasibility, and regulatory differences between Interim, Hybrid, and Ultimate designs?

The meaningful distinction is whether an alternative preserves existing rail infrastructure. An "interim" project that removes tracks makes a consequential and costly decision regardless of its name. Every comparison should include demolition, regulatory requirements, duplicated trail construction, future rail reconstruction, and the value of the public rail infrastructure being removed.

Only the interim trail requires lengthy legal maneuvers at the federal level to seek permission to remove the tracks, a requirement that could substantially delay or entirely prevent construction. 

Only the ultimate trail produces a trail that will not need to be demolished and rebuilt in part or in whole at a later time. 

The hybrid trail can be built now without requiring track removal, though in the future, some parts of the hybrid would have to be redesigned as part of the passenger rail construction project.  

The cost of all three trail designs exceed the current ATP grant.  Every month of delay raises the construction costs, so it makes sense to choose a design that can be implemented now, without the need for STB approval that is unlikely to be granted.

4. What must be preserved to maintain a viable future passenger-rail option?

Maintaining a viable passenger-rail future requires preserving the continuous railroad right-of-way, tracks, structures, operating rights, and connections to the regional rail network. Railroads are extraordinarily valuable infrastructure. We are fortunate to have secured our local rail line to be used for the public good. 

Demolishing existing rail infrastructure with the intention of rebuilding later is exponentially more difficult and expensive than preserving and repairing existing tracks. Tracks can be realigned, repaired, and upgraded to welded rail using railroad equipment that runs on the tracks, at a fraction of the cost of installing new tracks from scratch.  

Demolishing tracks also puts the passenger rail project at serious risk of losing federal passenger rail Corridor ID grant funds. Not all qualifying projects will be granted Step 3, NEPA and 30% engineering funding. Project readiness is one of the primary scoring metrics to decide which projects will be funded.  It is difficult to overstate the benefit in scoring that our project receives from already having an existing railroad track on which the project can be built. Demolishing our tracks and building trail-only infrastructure in its place would cause a severe reduction in our project-readiness scoring. A small regional project such as ours must use every competitive advantage, not destroy the infrastructure that is the foundation of our own project. 

It is important for cyclists to keep in mind that trains ARE cycling infrastructure and advocating for both the trail with rail is to advocate for a more complete cycling infrastructure that avoids dividing our community.

5. What regulatory issues could materially affect the timeline?

Federal railroad jurisdiction, freight and property rights, environmental review, grant requirements, permitting, and the Surface Transportation Board's authority can materially affect both the legality and timeline of changing the corridor. The RTC introduced these risks to our trail project, and they have the potential to indefinitely delay construction. To avoid potential costly regulatory delays, a trail design that preserves the tracks is simplest.

6. What claims or assumptions are inaccurate, outdated, or frequently misunderstood?

It is misleading to suggest that removing tracks has no consequence for future rail, because physical infrastructure, continuous right-of-way, operating rights, network connections, grant scoring, and reconstruction costs all matter. 

What is frequently misunderstood is that a plan focused on building only a trail will require destroying publicly owned rail structure that the public paid for with the expectation that the county would implement passenger rail. Both Measure D votes confirmed that expectation. It is inaccurate to present the rail and trail project in a context that does not include these facts.

It is also inaccurate and misleading to calculate the cost of the ’interim’ trail without including the costs of later removing that trail, rebuilding it to the side of the corridor, and rebuilding the tracks.  

Perhaps the biggest misunderstanding is to treat rail and bicycles as competitors, because trains ARE bike infrastructure.  Rail extends the practical reach of bicycle infrastructure and makes car-free travel possible for far more people. The Unified Corridor Investment Study (UCIS) was clear that adding rail to our transportation infrastructure will increase the number of cyclists and Metro riders as well as reduce the number of fatal and serious injury crashes in our county.  The Grand Jury report includes recommendations to guide decisions, especially decisions that threaten either of the original intended uses of the corridor: rail and trail.

7. What statements should be independently verified?

Claims that track removal is required to retain trail grants, that federal railroad requirements present no significant obstacle to track removal, or that removing tracks will not make future rail more difficult or expensive should be verified with independent subject-matter experts. 

Verification of cost and schedule comparisons built upon equivalent assumptions covering the life of the combined rail and trail project is also needed, along with clearly distinguishing legal requirements, grant requirements, engineering judgments, and policy preferences. 

8. Could different project-delivery methods, phasing strategies, or segment-specific approaches accelerate completion?

Yes, delivery can be accelerated by building ready sections, addressing constrained segments separately, repairing rail structures, value-engineering expensive elements, and pursuing rail and trail funding simultaneously. A phasing approach that constructs parts of the permanent Rail and Trail transportation system would be wiser than spending public money on infrastructure that must later be demolished and rebuilt.

9. If the objective is a useful and increasingly continuous trail as soon as reasonably possible, what should the RTC and local jurisdictions do next?

The objective to implement a useful and increasingly continuous trail  as soon as reasonably possible will best be achieved by protecting existing grants, building ready Rail Trail segments, solving difficult locations individually, preserving and repairing the railroad, and advancing passenger-rail planning at the same time.

If the objective is to provide the highest quality cycling infrastructure to our community, decisions that further both the rail and the trail for use by cyclists and others is the path forward. This can be achieved by stopping all efforts to get federal permission to remove the tracks and start building a hybrid trail using the existing grants and local funding available. This avoids costly legal and regulatory barriers and allows for development of the other important bike infrastructure - passenger rail. 

The fact is, a recreational trail is not the objective of our community. What we have asked for is a useful and continuous transportation system, and that means we must include passenger rail in our planning. The addition of passenger rail will turn a recreational trail into a working transportation system by extending the range of all cyclists while also providing an option for county residents who are non-drivers, including the elderly, people with disabilities, and those working in the service industry, to sacrifice a working transportation system for a trail only.