Statement by RTC Executive Director Sarah Christensen

MISSION: SCCRTC develops and delivers transportation solutions for a vibrant, sustainable, and equitable community.

It is an exciting time for improving transportation in our region, with many major regional projects under development that aim to address the mobility needs of our community. Below is an outlook on what’s to come in the following months.

Zero Emission Passenger Rail & Trail (ZEPRT) Project Update

The project development team has encountered complex engineering and funding constraints that have warranted the project team to modify the schedule for the Project Concept development, which is now expected to be completed in the fall of 2025.

In 2022, the Commission directed staff to pursue the next steps in developing a passenger rail facility along the Santa Cruz Branch Rail Line between the Pajaro Junction and Santa Cruz. The proposed project would upgrade the existing single track freight facility to a zero emission passenger rail facility, and construct the remaining segments of multi-use trail along the Branch Line.

When work commenced on the development of a Zero Emission Passenger Rail and Trail project concept, the work was broken up into 4 milestones, each including a significant amount of community and stakeholder engagement, with the fourth and final milestone originally scheduled to conclude in the spring of 2025. In response to community and stakeholder input received during Milestone 3 late last year, it became apparent that additional engineering and community engagement work is needed in order to gain feedback on some of the complex constraints associated with the project’s conceptual alignment, for example along Walker Street in Watsonville, through the City of Capitola and Aptos Village, and along Beach Street in Santa Cruz. It is crucial to the development of the project concept that the station and alignment options are fully evaluated, because these features affect travel times, ridership forecasts, and project costs.

Furthermore, the funding outlook for the project at both the state and federal level has changed since 2022 due to the implementation of both the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and California’s State Rail Plan, which was adopted in January of 2025. There have always been very few state or federal grants available to pay for pre-construction phases of capital projects, which are commonly funded locally.  The most likely future funding source to fund the remaining environmental work is the federal Corridor Identification Program. However, the soonest these funds could become available, if prioritized for the development of passenger rail along the Branch Line, is not until 2027.

For these reasons, the project team has recommended extending the fourth and final milestone to take place from March to August of 2025, with adoption of the final project concept report scheduled for the fall of 2025. The project team has been working hard to develop projected ridership forecasts, travel times, cost estimates, and alignment refinements to answer the community and Commission’s most pressing questions about the possibility of passenger rail through our County. The first of such information will be the baseline design concept and order of magnitude cost estimates for the bridge repairs and replacements, to be presented at a community information session webinar on March 12, 2025, followed by an opportunity for input at the March 20, 2025 Commission meeting and subsequent community open houses that are in the works. In the meantime, we encourage those interested to follow the progress through the project website, sccrtc.org/zeprt.  

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Financing of Measure D

Since the passage of the half-cent sales tax measure for transportation, 2016-Measure D, the RTC has been successful in leveraging our limited revenues to bring significant state and federal competitive grant funds to our region to implement the projects outlined in the Measure D expenditure plan. RTC is delivering transportation projects faster than the revenues generated by Measure D can pay for. This introduces the need to borrow against the future revenues in order to fund the local match for Highway 1 and Coastal Rail Trail projects in the near term.

My predecessor, Guy Preston, introduced the idea of financing against future revenues to the Commission in 2020. The RTC staff and financial consultant team will be re-introducing this topic in an effort to educate the community and Commission on what financing entails.

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Capitola Town Hall

On February 12, 2025, the City of Capitola requested additional information about the various projects under development along the branch line in Capitola. The County of Santa Cruz and RTC staff will be hosting a town hall meeting at the New Brighton Middle School Performing Arts Center on Tuesday March 4, 2025 to provide additional information and allow interested community members to ask questions about the Coastal Rail Trail Segments 10-11 project alignment, design, and funding; the Zero Emission Passenger Rail & Trail project; the Capitola Trestle; and the encroachment of mobile homes along the branch line. We are fully committed to collaborating with the City of Capitola to develop a solution that aligns with the City’s priorities.

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Organizational Development

Following the RTC organizational restructuring that concluded last fall, we have been hard at work filling new positions, including a new Real Property Team to handle property management, maintenance, and real property matters along the branch line; two accounting positions; a new supervising planner position; senior engineer; and 2 department heads – Director of Capital Projects and Director of Internal Services. In the meantime, staff has continued working toward strategic initiatives, team building, and focusing on operational improvements post-restructuring. This includes a comprehensive review of the RTC’s policies and procedures to adapt to our new structure and to the needs of the community we serve. Concurrently, the RTC is conducting a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility study that will review current policies and practices and recommend how the RTC can improve in these areas to best serve the diverse needs of all community members.

The goal of the organizational development work is to foster a culture of continuous improvement through the development of a comprehensive training program for staff, managers, and executives with the goal of being nimble, adaptable, and responsive to the needs of the community.