Our Position Against Measure D
The Greenway Measure’s key amendments to the General Plan:
- Would remove the following: to preserve and protect existing railroad right-of-way and existing rail facilities for current seasonal recreational travel, for availability to carry freight, for possible future passenger rail service within the County, and for possible future passenger rail transportation for intra-County commuter use
- Would Add: To encourage and support the transformation of a portion of the Santa Cruz Branch Line Corridor (“Corridor”) for interim use as a high-quality, multi-use Greenway, [a paved path for bicycles and pedestrians -ed] while preserving future rail options through railbanking.
“Railbanking” is a legal strategy to preserve a right of way when there is a conversion from freight to other uses such as a trail. The federal Surface Transportation Board has approved well over 1000 railbanking proposals. Only in one percent of these conversions has rail service been restored to the right of way.
People on both sides of this debate agree that if the Greenway Measure passes, the practical impact would be to end the potential for passenger rail service on the corridor for the foreseeable future.
Let’s get clear what will happen to the trail if the Greenway Measure passes.
The Regional Transportation Commission’s current plan is a trail alongside the railroad tracks. Portions of this trail have been built in Santa Cruz and Watsonville. Several more segments are moving towards breaking ground.
The Greenway Measure would set aside this plan in order to pursue railbanking and abandonment of the freight easement. Our correspondence with the legal staff of the Surface Transportation Board leads us to conclude that the outcome of an application for railbanking is highly uncertain. The Surface Transportation Board’s usual practice is to oppose abandoning freight on a line if that would isolate a rail operation from the rail network. In this case, removing the Watsonville to Santa Cruz tracks would cut off the Roaring Camp tourist train from Felton to Santa Cruz from the rest of the rail network. According to the STB staff, if Roaring Camp provides evidence showing a need for freight service on its line, this would weigh heavily against approval of the abandonment.
Let’s keep our future options open
- There are currently no viable alternatives for most commuters stuck in traffic on Highway 1.
- Auto dependency forces people to spend a large portion of their income on transportation.
- Dependency on petroleum for our transportation leads to wars and injustice.
- Auto-centric thinking is driving a plan to spend local dollars on Highway 1 auxiliary lanes that Caltrans predicts will not reduce traffic congestion or improve safety.
We need to develop alternatives to auto dependency.
Let’s not shut down our future option for clean, safe and reliable transit that runs through the heart of our community. Transit on the rail corridor could be the catalyst that brings about a change in how many of us get around, with connecting buses, ride sharing and e-bikes bringing us to our final destinations.
We are on the verge of a transportation revolution that is what we need to respond to our climate emergency. This revolution includes freight carried by electric trains. If we rip out our rail infrastructure now, the next generation will suffer the results of our shortsightedness.
Vote No on the Greenway Measure.
LINKS to background information:
Why We Need Dialogue
After this election, we need a dialogue process to resolve this community conflict. Here’s why:
No Tax, No Transit According to the Regional Transportation Commission, it won’t be financially feasible to develop transit on the rail corridor without a substantial local funding source. We think it is highly uncertain a tax measure can win at the ballot box given the substantial community opposition.
No Abandonment, No Greenway Similarly, we think it is highly uncertain whether the Greenway vision will be implemented if this measure passes. That’s because in order to build the Greenway, the County would need to use railbanking to preserve the right of way for public use, once the easement for freight has been abandoned. Railbanking has been used by various communities who have converted rails to trails. However, our correspondence with the Surface Transporation Board (STB) suggests that there is a great deal of uncertainty over whether that agency would grant the abandonment of freight on our corridor given that would disconnect the Felton-to-Santa Cruz line (used by Roaring Camp) from the rest of the rail network. No abandonment, no railbanking.
Stalemate We think community dialogue is the best way to find common ground and move forward on a plan for the corridor.
The Missing Debate on Transportation
Transit Expert: You’re missing an important debate
When an internationally renowned transit expert visited our County to shed light on the rail corridor question, he used the opportunity to tell us that we are missing an important debate.
In 2018 the Santa Cruz Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) invited Jarrett Walker to discuss the use of the rail corridor. In his talk Jarrett Walker suggested that we need to be having a more immediate debate. “The debate before you is not just the exciting debate over what your infrastructure should be. You have a very immediate debate over whether you want to begin providing competitive transit service…”
Walker showed a map of the population density of our County and compared that with a map showing the frequency of bus transit service. The only transit service considered “frequent,” (at least every 15 minutes) are the routes between UCSC and Downtown Santa Cruz. Walker remarked, “For a community of your size and your density, let alone the degree of progressive values that operate in this community, you do not have very much transit.”
Walker said that more frequent transit service would benefit travelers along the Santa Cruz-Watsonville corridor. “We know that simply a higher level of service would be useful to a lot more people and would be having a lot more benefit particularly in the Santa Cruz-Watsonville corridor and both internally to Santa Cruz and Watsonville.”
The RTC’s Unified Corridor Investment Study (UCIS) took a step in that direction by including Increased Transit Frequency on Soquel Drive/Freedom Boulevard in its analysis of investment scenarios. However, the RTC staff omitted this strategy in their preferred scenario. If I’m understanding Jarrett Walker correctly, this is a mistake.
“How much of a transit system do you want? Because you clearly have less than you could use. You clearly have low hanging fruit….”
“It’s not about the big spectacular project that transforms everything like the BART extension [in San Jose]. It’s about fixing the bus network. Its about making the bus system incremental more useful so that more and more people find it to be expanding their liberty.”
Jarrett Walker did weigh in on the use of the rail corridor. He described the transportation chokepoint in Aptos as “the mother of all chokepoints,” where geography constrains potential expansions to Soquel Drive, Highway 1 and the rail corridor. He said, “It’s a problem of sharing space.” The solution “has to work for transit. It has to work for bicycles and pedestrians, and it has to make driving at least possible. … The way it doesn’t work is when one group … wants to claim a certain space before other key things that want to fit through that space have been figured out. That is the concern I’m having with the idea of moving forward rapidly on making a decision about the rail line before we have a clear picture of what transit looks like with that. And I’ve looked at your documents and I have not seen that clear picture.”
We note that the RTC’s immediate plan for the Aptos chokepoint is to widen Highway 1 for auxiliary lanes. This plan will not work for bus transit, as explained in the discussion of Bus on Shoulder at right. It will not work to ease traffic congestion, as we discuss here. And it is questionable whether it will work for bicyclists and pedestrians, since the development of an “interim” trail depends on the federal approval of abandonment of the freight easement, a highly questionable proposition. Finally, the plan defers the question of rail transit to some undefined future time. The RTC’s plan to widen Highway 1 flunks all of Jarrett Walker’s criteria.
Transit and Trail Lose in Hwy 1 Expansion
The needed debate on transportation in Santa Cruz County should include revisiting plans to expand Highway 1. Money spent on a futile attempt to relieve traffic congestion on Highway 1 could be better spent on transit and active transportation. In the next two years the RTC plans to spend more money on auxiliary lanes on Highway 1 than the entire 30 year allotment of Measure D funds for the rail trail. (The lawsuit by our organization and the Sierra Club could invalidate the EIR for the project.)
In 2013 the State Legislature passed a bill authored by Mark Stone to allow bus-only lanes on the 11 mile stretch from Santa Cruz to Watsonville, as well as in Monterey County. Instead of bus-only lanes, the RTC is planning to run buses in the 4 miles of proposed auxiliary lanes that are currently funded. The only bus-only portion will be short segments on 3 overpasses. The RTC calls their plan “bus-on-shoulder”. That’s a misnomer. All bus-on-shoulder operations in the nation consist of bus-only lanes. Under the RTC plan buses will be stuck in commute traffic in the auxiliary lanes. The photo above is a preview of the future: the 91X bus stuck in rush hour traffic on the segment of Highway 1 that already has an auxiliary lane.
Here’s what the EIR predicted about traffic conditions after building the next auxiliary lane, Soquel Dr. to 41st Ave: “In the southbound corridor in the PM peak hour…the Auxiliary Lane Alternative would slightly worsen traffic operations.”
Watch the 11 minute video: REAL Bus-on-Shoulder for Santa Cruz County
See more information on alternatives to expanding Highway 1.
Resources
Alternatives to expanding Highway 1
Jarrett Walker blog and book: Human Transit, How Clear Thinking About Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives
Christof Spieler blog and book: Trains, Buses, People (The home page describes the conditions for transit success)
Yonah Freemark blog: The Transport Politic