Ed. note: The Sentinel Editorial of March 5 regarding passenger rail plans predictably generated numerous responses. On March 7, we published a rebuttal from RTC member Mike Rotkin and, in the interest of fairness, also the following critical take on our opinion a train would be too costly.

Somebody has to straighten out the “long and winding ... coastal passenger rail” Editorial as the Sentinel tells it (“Train whistle remains far distant sound,” March 5). It might as well be me to unkink your disappointingly misleading and negative narrative.

If you had wanted to tell it straight you wouldn’t have used slanted nouns and adjectives (e.g., “the utopian dreams of proponents”). Here’s what else you got wrong.

The RTC purchased the railroad property in 2012, not 2010. The infrastructure and the passenger transit system will not belong to the County of Santa Cruz. The RTC is an instrumentality of the State of California, and the operating entity will most likely be a special transportation district, not the county government.

You noted with a disparaging tone that the transportation project cost is likely to be “a significant sum in a time when the county is facing a financial crunch anticipating a cutoff of much of its funding from the federal government.” But the real story is that the railway construction funding is to come from federal and state grants, not from the county general fund. None of Santa Cruz County’s budgeted expenditures will ever be needed, either for construction or for operation and maintenance in the future.

You dismissively mentioned the “long-abandoned tracks,” but the truth is that the Santa Cruz Branch Line is federally regulated as an active railroad and the existing rails, while decades old, are still useable, though upgrading will be needed, and some bridges will be replaced. Formal abandonment is not in the RTC’s plans.

You said, “if it gets the go-ahead ... that will mean ... another significant tax increase within a few years.” Yes, it’s true that a tax stream will be needed by the mid-2030s for the “local match” — a small portion of the total construction cost, and for ongoing operations and maintenance, but that will entail an excise tax approved by a majority vote, not a property tax. The cost of the tax will be widely distributed across the county, paid by residents and visitors alike.

You said, “the county [will need to] acquire additional right-of-way properties along the corridor (where mobile homes have encroached).” That is a plainly false statement. The encroachments will have to be removed, at no cost to the RTC, but no real property will need to be acquired. The RTC already owns the railroad corridor, onto which the mobile home owners’ structures encroach illegally.

You said the “trail is having to leave the beaten path to meander through traffic-filled streets,” but the truth is that, where any alignment option for the trail alongside the public street may eventually be chosen — it’s still just a conceptual option — the Class IV bike/pedestrian pathway would be set apart from street traffic by grade separation, a buffer zone, and guardrails or barriers. That would be much better and safer than existing Class II and III bike lanes.

You said that “a commuter train, while an admirable dream, is simply not feasible.” That may be your dogmatic naysaying opinion, based on nothing conclusive, but nothing of the kind has been established by the responsible professional transportation planners, designers, and engineers. Their job is to design a feasible plan for passenger rail transit, and that is what they will do with all deliberate speed — not “decades hence,” as you put it.

You noted, “this issue has dominated letters and commentaries,” but it’s a tempest in a teacup. Since 56,390 voters – that’s 73% countywide — crushingly repudiated the 2022 Measure D, only a very small clique of inveterate sworn enemies of rail transit have persisted in gainsaying the RTC’s Zero Emission Passenger Rail and Trail project — some two or three dozen of them by my count, abetted periodically by the Sentinel’s editorial page screeds.

Jim Weller is a Capitola resident and a frequent contributor on this subject.