Progressive Rail wants out of Contract with Santa Cruz County RTC

On July 1, 2020, the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) announced that the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (aka Progressive Rail) had notified the Commission of its intention to terminate the contract for freight and rail service with the RTC. The short statement belies the poor and avoidable decision made just 2 years ago by the RTC, led by Chair John Leopold, to sign a 10 year contract with Progressive Rail despite overwhelming evidence provided by the public to the RTC. It’s important to revisit the facts because the RTC is not learning from its mistakes and continues to waste taxpayer dollars on an infeasible train.

Progressive Rail is now the third rail operator to be chosen and subsequently quit during the short time the RTC has owned the rail line. This is not normal. The last rail operator, Iowa Pacific, was struggling in 2017 when the RTC began to secretly negotiate with Progressive Rail to take over the line. Progressive Rail came to the January 2018 RTC meeting and made a polished presentation about its capabilities, ability to turnaround troubled rail lines, demand for freight in Santa Cruz County, and—in a fantastical offer—how it planned to restart the Suntan Special train from San Jose to Santa Cruz through Salinas. 

At the meeting, Santa Cruz County Greenway accurately pointed out that there was no freight north of Watsonville despite the claims by the RTC, Friends of the Rail and Trail (FORT) and Progressive Rail, and that the plan of record to build a train and trail side-by-side was infeasible and, in any case, provided less transportation value than a multi-use trail optimized for commuting and recreation alike. The most reputable transportation planners in the U.S., Nelson Nygaard and Alta Planning and Design, agreed with Greenway’s approach and provided voluminous back-up data to the RTC to support our position.

Later, at the pivotal June 14, 2018 RTC meeting, the majority of the public articulately questioned the RTC’s intent to proceed with the Progressive Rail contract when a third way, satisfying the need for freight services in Watsonville and waiting for completion of the Unified Corridors Study was available. Nonetheless, 8 Commissioners voted to sign the 10 year contract with Progressive Rail: John Leopold, Ryan Coonerty, Mike Rotkin, Trina Coffman Gomez, Greg Caput, Richelle Noroyan, Ed Botorff, and Cynthia Chase. The 4 opposed to signing the Progressive Rail contract were Randy Johnson, Ginnie Johnson (alternate for Bruce MacPherson), Patrick Mulhearn (alternate for Zach Friend), and Jacques Bertrand. 

Even a cursory evaluation of the economics of the contract made it clear that it would not work for Progressive Rail, just as the economics had not worked for Sierra Northern or Iowa Pacific, the two previous rail operators. Greenway did exhaustive research and provided it to the RTC staff and Commissioners (The Case Against Progressive Rail). Nonetheless, FORT, the Santa Cruz Land Trust, and others, apparently blinded by an obsession with trains, argued to sign the contract which they thought would lock in their plan. Fortunately, reality has a way of catching up with bad policy and execution. Some would call it willful ignorance.

On top of this failure, the RTC continues to waste Santa Cruz County taxpayer’s money on the rail corridor. For example, the RTC Commissioners recently voted to spend $70,000 for trash pick-up and graffiti abatement, $126,650 for the repair of a slope failure near Manresa Beach (one of many to come), between $35,000-$100,000 on soil investigation and engineering, and is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair track washouts near Harkins Slough. Another study, this one costing $640,000 and called the Transit Corridor Alternatives Analysis, is being prepared to again justify a train. The flow of money down the drain continues, blindly ignoring the evidence that neither a freight or passenger train will ever successfully run on the tracks north of Watsonville.

In total, between 2010 and 2021, the RTC has spent or is budgeted to spend $25 million “maintaining the rail corridor.” This while our roads deteriorate, Hwy 1 is congested with traffic, METRO is failing, and other communities worldwide adopt e-mobility solutions in conjunction with existing public transit which are cheaper, more equitable and effective.

As Commissioner Randy Johnson so accurately put it at the June 14, 2018 RTC meeting, “I predict that signing the Progressive Rail contract will erode the public’s trust in this Commission because we really aren’t listening.” No truer words have ever been spoken.

What you can do: Support Manu Koenig to replace John Leopold on November 3 as the First District Supervisor and member of the Regional Transportation Commission. Manu will be Your Voice for Change—a voice to reverse years of bad decisions and waste and “get our county moving.”

1. Status of Agreement with Saint Paul and Pacific Railway, SCCRTC, July 1, 2020 https://sccrtc.org/status-of-agreement-with-saint-paul-and-pacific-railway/

2. RTC Meeting, June 14, 2018 https://youtu.be/nJYXiAY7Fco?t=20874

3. The Case Against Progressive Rail, Santa Cruz County Greenway, May 2018 https://sccgreenway.org/news/the-case-against-progressive-rail

4. Manu Koenig for Supervisor https://manukoenig.com/