Measure D: Express Bus a Valid Local Transit Option

Guest commentary By Brian Sugrue

For those who need to commute between north and south Santa Cruz County, the proposed Rail Trail already has a valid competitor, other than a car. The Santa Cruz Metro runs an express bus (in both directions at the same time!) between Watsonville and downtown Santa Cruz. It takes 43 minutes for the 91X bus to complete the journey (20 minutes to Cabrillo). It currently costs $2 each way, $1 with student ID. The Friends of the Rail & Trail website predicts, optimistically, that the ($1.3 billion) proposed train could do the same journey in 40 minutes.

This express bus, which travels on the freeway, diverts off at State Park Drive, to the most utilized stop, Cabrillo College, before returning to the freeway at Park Avenue where it continues on to 41st Avenue, and then travels city streets along Soquel Avenue. The Rail Trail proposal would require a train station at Park Avenue, 1.1 miles from Cabrillo, making necessary either an invigorating walk, or a shuttle transfer, for the students. The 91X also stops at Dominican Hospital (1.7 miles from the 7th Avenue train station), and several other midpoints in the commercial corridors of Santa Cruz. The existing train tracks, due to their placement in the 1870s, are mostly closer to the coast in what are now predominantly single-family residential neighborhoods.

In July of 2019, before the pandemic arrived, the Santa Cruz Metro published a ridership study and survey. Included in this research project is the documented average daily usage of this beneficial public transportation resource. The 91X departs from three well placed Watsonville bus stops (the train would have one depot) eight times a day, and returns from Santa Cruz seven times a day. There are also the much more frequent 69A and 69W buses that are local along their journey, bypassing Highway 1, which also service the full length of this corridor. This SCMTD study was purposely timed while schools were in session to accurately reflect typical usage. The northbound bus averaged 16 people boarding the bus from the three Watsonville bus stops combined, each weekday scheduled trip, and 13 people each southbound trip, from the four stops in the city of Santa Cruz, combined.

Many of the both north and southbound commuters were not traveling the full length of the route, but mostly to Cabrillo College. This is why on the Metro website the 91X is named “The Cabrillo Express.” In contrast, the proposed train is a single- track, and therefore the options for optimizing usage in both directions simultaneously at peak times are limited.

There are numerous examples across this country of abandoned railroads converted to trails, as well as many active rail lines adding a trail alongside it. But there are very few examples of an attempt to resurrect an unsuccessful abandoned railway by squeezing in segments of an adjacent desirable trail, in the hope of persuading people to vote for a resuscitation of an obsolescent train corridor, which has failed several times before. It would be heavily subsidized, and assuredly fail again for passenger service, due to our obvious lack of large urban density. This controversy has divided our community. But I feel everyone on both sides has the best of intentions.

Those that advocate for rail, as electric cars and bikes and buses are beginning their inevitable ascendancy, are obviously environmentally altruistic people. But in my opinion, they are not accordingly analytical of the scope and the scale of the true costs (new bridge in Capitola, etc.) and probable usage of a commuter train, vs. our communities’ relatively small population. A flight of fancy, end of the rainbow, boondoggle.

To properly bring light rail to Santa Cruz County, the many decades old, undulating rusty roller coaster tracks would have to be replaced regardless. Or maybe we could run it under 20 mph, or just ask the Boardwalk to promote the train as the little sister to The Giant Dipper. 

Brian Sugrue is a Santa Cruz resident who says he is not a member of any advocacy group involved in the rail and trail debate.