For nearly 40 years, Santa Cruz County has been talking about reviving daily passenger rail service–for the first time since 1938–to ease the area’s traffic congestion. The first study dates back to 1987. Voters approved the first bond issue in 1990, and in 2012, the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) purchased the 32-mile railroad right of way, which runs the length of the county, from Union Pacific for $14.2 million.
The plan was to develop a commuter rail line with a trail alongside it–an idea endorsed by county voters as recently as 2022. But today, there is still no train. Only about two miles of trail has been completed with another seven miles under construction, but the remaining 24 miles are largely untouched. And now, the project faces a crossroads.
A draft report by RTC staff and a team of consultants, released July 30, estimates the construction cost for the rail portion of the project at nearly $4.3 billion–far higher than previous projections. The report says that 28 of the 33 existing bridges along the route would need to be replaced, as would nearly all the existing tracks. Then, there is the cost to build nine train stations, and to buy the actual trains–all before the first trains leave the station.
The report estimates the annual cost to operate the rail service at between $34 million and $41 million. It envisions twice-an-hour train service between Santa Cruz and Pajaro beginning in 2047, with between 4,200 and 5,400 riders on a typical weekday. By contrast, roughly 100,000 vehicles per day currently use Highway 1, and nearly 12,000 riders per weekday use Santa Cruz County METRO bus service, according to agency data.
With the new report in hand, the 12-member commission will need to decide by the end of the year whether to fund the next step in the rail project, a preliminary environmental review.
Meanwhile, the Santa Cruz City Council has asked the RTC to develop a plan to temporarily convert a small section of the right of way in the city’s Seabright neighborhood into a pedestrian and bicycle path while the nearby Murray Street Bridge undergoes a three-year construction project.
KAZU spoke with RTC Executive Director Sarah Christensen, who led the team behind the new rail report and who will need to execute the commission’s decisions, at the agency’s offices in downtown Santa Cruz on August 26.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Scott Cohn, KAZU: The numbers are pretty sobering. We're talking now about $4.3 billion to build it, another $30 to $40 million a year to operate it; about 5,000 riders a day, right?
Do those numbers make this project any less viable than it was before?
Sarah Christensen, Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission: I would say with enough community support and enough funding support that this project is viable, but it is an expensive project. The Santa Cruz Branch Rail Line is a single track freight line that has some right of way constraints and some topographic challenges, if you will. And trying to squeeze an every-30-minute passenger train facility with a multi-use trail definitely has its challenges, which is demonstrated in the cost of the project. So, it's not that it's infeasible, it's just that in order to fund this project, we're going to need to really prioritize it, potentially over other needs in our region.
Cohn: How much would the county taxpayers have to bear, and how might that be paid for locally?
Christensen: Well there's two components to the project. One is to build the project. And to build a project, there's a lot more potential outside resources in the form of competitive grants from the state and the federal government, which is promising. And then the second component of the project is once it is built, to operate and maintain it. Unfortunately there's very few funding sources out there that support the ongoing operation and maintenance of such a transit facility.
We would pursue both federal and state grants. I would say the bare minimum construction match is usually about 20 percent. But the higher your local match, the more competitive your project is for the funding. So we expect typically between 20 and 50 percent of a local match for a project of this magnitude, of this size.
I would say with enough community support and enough funding support that this project is viable, but it is an expensive project.Sarah Christensen, Executive Director, Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission
Cohn: So starting with the construction, we're talking about upwards of a billion dollars that the local taxpayers would have to come up with. Where might that come from?
Christensen: Well, we would definitely need a new revenue source, most likely in the form of a sales tax measure. And then we would also need to prioritize our other discretionary funds that our region receives for transportation purposes.
Cohn: And does the same sort of principle then apply to the ongoing $30 to $40 million a year for operation?
Christensen: Right. That would definitely need to be supported by a new revenue source. Again, the most likely type of revenue source would be a sales tax.
Cohn: And getting back to what this all buys, does it make a dent? Is it going to make a noticeable difference in traffic in the county?
Christensen: Sure. So, the way that I think about this project and the future of our region, the local jurisdictions have a significant amount of pressure on them to build housing. And whether this region likes it or not, we’re going to grow, right? So we have an opportunity to do so in a really smart and sustainable way through the rail project. If we were to kind of bunch that housing close to the rail corridor, having the rail line operational, and the trail facility, it really creates a sustainable and efficient way to travel throughout the county. And so, maybe we don't, today, have the population to have huge ridership numbers that you see in urbanized areas. But the long term vision is, if we can develop the land use around the stations in a really effective way, it could really translate to high ridership in a really beneficial and sustainable way to move around our county.
Cohn: Is there a plan B, given what we're finding out about the costs and benefits of this project?
Christensen: Well, this type of project, because it is such a large project, you're right, it is a long-term project. The financial analysis work that we did projected that if everything kind of falls into place perfectly, this facility would be operational by 2047. That's more than 20 years away. So, we'll see. I mean, we’ve got to take steps towards delivering this project if we're serious about the project. And we'll find out, I think, soon enough. I think the community has weighed in significantly about the pros and the cons and the benefits as well as the challenges with this type of facility. So, we'll see what the commission wants to do. It's still a really beneficial process to have gone through, because I think our region's vision is always going to be rail and trail. It might be maybe later in terms of phasing. It’s really up to the commission. But I don't see our long-term vision changing.
Cohn: So what happens in the meantime while we're waiting for a train?
Christensen: We continue working with our funding partners to continue to maintain and improve facilities for non-driving. Obviously, the reason for congestion is just the volume of the cars on the road. And so, part of the solution is to try to get folks to take other modes like transit, ride their bikes, or walk. It’s much more attractive to do that if you have better infrastructure facilities, like the bicycle-pedestrian bridge over the highway, for example, or the buffered and protected bike lanes on Soquel Drive.
Cohn: A related development, and maybe sort of a microcosm, is the situation with Murray Street and the rail bridge next to it. Talk about the devil in the details!
Christensen: It's definitely impacted travel in the area, and fewer customers are visiting the businesses. And the city of Santa Cruz decided to begin this proposal to temporarily use the railroad bridge that the RTC owns for active transportation purposes temporarily as kind of like a temporary detour during construction of the Murray Street Bridge, which is a pretty creative approach. Not without challenges, obviously, but the RTC is fully supportive of working with the city and facilitating any kind of approvals that are needed.
Cohn: I guess it all really speaks to the complexity of mass transportation in Santa Cruz County as it grows. It's incredibly complicated, isn't it?
Christensen: Yeah. And it all kind of works together in a comprehensive system, and it's not just one mode of travel that the RTC prioritizes. We prioritize all modes. And that's been our approach for decades. And there's never a dull day or a boring day being here at the RTC.
