Privatization plan benefits one company and prioritizes dollars over people

Santa Cruz, CA, October 14, 2021 – Thousands of Santa Cruz County residents today announced their opposition to the demo of a tourist trolley by TIG/m and its local partner Coast Futura, a spinout organization of the Friends of the Rail and Trail (FORT), in their attempt to privatize the publicly owned Santa Cruz County Branch Rail Line.

The TIG/m Business Plan outlines a proposed private trolley line from Davenport to Capitola, excluding Watsonville, that essentially privatizes the rail corridor and does not address any of the real transportation needs of Santa Cruz County.  It is now clear the train lobby wants metal wheels running on the tracks regardless of the absence of value to the community.  It’s another diversion tactic to turn attention away from Greenway’s pro-transit, funded and doable strategy to combine improvements to Metro and Hwy 1 with an accessible, continuous and multi-use Greenway.  The business plan is located on the RTC website: https://sccrtc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/SCBLR-Concept-Proposal.pdf

Facts the public should be aware of:

1. The RTC has never studied or recommended a private trolley service on the rail corridor from Davenport to Capitola. 

2. All the up front investment (tens of millions of dollars) to make the tracks and corridor suitable for the TIG/m private trolley would be borne by taxpayers.

3. TIG/m says it will make a profit on the service and share 5% of the net profits with the Regional Transportation Commission (RTC). This is simply absurd. No train on the corridor has made a profit and there is zero evidence that TIG/m will either.

4. TIG/m is a tiny undercapitalized company in Southern CA. Turning the corridor over to such a business is unacceptable. The proposal would take our public asset and privatize it.

5. TIG/m has no experience operating any of their products at this scale. They have never operated at commuter rail speeds and distances in any of their 3 other short tourist implementations (< 2 miles). The trolley “demo” will run at only 10 MPH

6. To our knowledge, no RTC Commissioner supports a public/private partnership to privatize the corridor.

7. There is no funding identified to support this proposal.

8. There is no service to Watsonville. 

9. Since the proposed trolley would run from Capitola to Davenport, it is by definition a tourist/recreational service and will not address traffic congestion issues in Santa Cruz County.

10. Like other previous train proposals, the trolley will take away the possibility of a CONTINUOUS trail on the corridor.

Santa Cruz County residents strongly urge the RTC to: 

1. Railbank the corridor and build an interim trail now.

2. Continue to invest in METRO to restore routes, increase frequency, move to all electric buses similar to the one recently implemented for a circular route in downtown Watsonville, install WIFI on all buses, modernize interiors, and provide app-based geolocation to enable updated arrival/departure times.

3. Continue to invest in ParaCruz and Lift Line to provide door-to-door service for the elderly and disabled which actually meets their needs.

4. Move forward expeditiously with approved and funded Measure D programs, including Bus-on-Shoulder on Hwy 1 and Adaptive Signal Control on Soquel/Freedom.

5. Act with urgency! With the Murray Street Bridge seismic repair scheduled for 2022 and Bus-on-Shoulder on Hwy 1 scheduled for 2023, Santa Cruz County’s transportation issues will get worse as two major north-south arteries are impacted by construction. The need to build an interim trail on the rail corridor is urgent!

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Santa Cruz County Greenway is a 501(c)4 non-profit advocacy organization whose mission is “to create a spectacular Greenway as the backbone of an active transportation and transit network.”  Please visit our website at sccgreenway.org for more information.