Well then, by that logic, there is no money for the trail, either. May as well not do anything at all.

It will cost money to remove the tracks and build the trail–and you’ll have a corridor of less capacity and less value, not to mention the land ownership problems as easement issues kick in.

For those who are not familiar with what easements are, they are a type of property lease, allowing one person or entity to cross the property of another person or entity. They are pretty common for things like pipelines, power lines, and railroads.

They are also usually pretty specific. If the use for the easement is removed, the property reverts to the owner.

In this case, the easement agreements are for a railroad. The agreements do not say they are for a corridor, or a trail. Take up the tracks, the property goes back to the owners or designated parties in the original agreement. The right of way, the right for the railroad or the trail, legally goes up in smoke.

In short, no railroad, no easement, no trail.

Be careful what you wish for.

These things can get expensive.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/was-public-railroaded-in-trail-deal/

The author writes the train will go to Pajaro. Bad news. There is no commuter rail connection there and there won’t be. The last discussion in February 2020 by the Capitol Corridor board stated “We are not currently planning for a Capitol Corridor train extension to Salinas”, which means no Pajaro connection because… there is no money.

Another misstatement, “bus options would require tearing up the tracks to build a road, they are very expensive”. Any potential passenger rail also requires tearing up the tracks for something that can handle the RTC’s proposed 45-60 mph trains through the county. That’s more expensive. Don’t ask me, go look at the RTC’s Unified Corridor Investment Study, Appendix B and compare prices. Train is more.

But the real problem with the train is it is located in residential areas next to the ocean and far from commercial areas that need its proximity. This is a recipe for failure according to transportation studies.

As to the trail, the RTC told the public that 8 of the 32 planned trail miles were to be completed by 2018. Do you know how many were completed by then? Zero. Today a 200 ft long bridge extension over the San Lorenzo river is all that was done. What about the rest? No money, wrong plans, and problems. The first portion to be worked on, 2 miles on the West Side, turned out to be more difficult because the planners forgot to include excavation into account hillsides (what? this is Santa Cruz County). They reduced the trail to 1.2 miles of flat land. Whoops, construction bids came in 3 times the amount budgeted. Move money around and its under construction at $8M per mile… twice the cost of a rural freeway lane. Today – 10 years after the chance to start building a real rail-trail – just a bridge exists.

Back to the trail, a simple trail could be built with 5 years at 1/4th the cost if the RTC and Friends of the Rail AND Trail would stop pushing to keep the train tracks in place. The concept is railbanking where the federal government takes stewardship of the rail easement and the county builds a trail. The RTC is ideologically wedded to a train, so the picture is twist. They state it would take 10 years to rail bank. The federal Surface Transportation Board (train regulators) staff attorney told me personally it takes 8 months. He stated the biggest problem is that, once a municipality railbanks a stretch of rail easement, they don’t have the money to build a trail. WE HAVE THE MONEY! $85M. But it’s being squandered as I write this. $10M for the 1.2 miles on the west side (of course, Santa Cruz gets theirs before the money runs out). And that is flat land with no hillsides. What happens when you hit south of the SL river?

So, the author can write how wonderful life will be with a railroad with connector buses and a trail next to the tracks. Wont happen. And time will tick on and money will drain away (already $11M has been spent just on the tracks with another $40M in the actual RTC budget in the next two years) until we all get too tired to remember what we wanted in the first place… a simple trail that we can walk, stroller, bike, or sit along to enjoy (without a 45-60 mph hour train whizzing by).

The same battery technologies that are used in electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles are being applied to rail transit vehicles today, providing an entirely new line up of rail service options. A new category of transit vehicles, “rapid streetcars” are easier to board than buses and use less power, and batteries eliminate the need for expensive and ugly overhead wires for power.

People who feel that buses are a better choice for the rail corridor should realize two important elements: First, a single cross county bus line won’t serve riders better than a fixed-rail route; either way a transfer is required for most trips. Second, bus service that’s integrated to work with the rail transit backbone may qualify for State Rail Plan funding, and an integrated bus+rail system could grow Metro ridership while bringing in a wider range of funding packages.

Let’s think of how a network of bikes and rail working in sync with Metro can deliver a more powerful punch than any one of them alone, or even the sum of those parts. With rail + trail + Metro, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts!