SANTA CRUZ — Beginning with the Capitola trestle, the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission’s Thursday conversation moved up and down the tracks of the Santa Cruz Branch Rail Line as officials and locals considered its future.

The commission first adopted staff’s recommendation to prioritize preconstruction activities that would enable the rehabilitation of the seaside trestle’s five bridges and directed the agency to work with county public works to explore potential conversion work to be done to the deck system across the bridges.

Then, it heard an update from Executive Director Guy Preston on the situation with preserving the 32 miles of rail line that the RTC owns. Unfortunately, as many commissioners illustrated, options that would provide public access in the right of way cannot be acted upon until the other parties with a stake in the rail line come to an understanding.

Support for any service

In June, RTC authorized its staff to pursue a repurposing study for the Capitola trestle line to determine if it could handle multiple uses — trail, light train or freight — in its current condition or in a rehabilitated condition. The study found that no matter what form or forms the commission ultimately decides the trestle should take, reinforcement to maintain what’s already in place should happen soon.

“The bridges need to be (renovated) to get back up to standard and (hold) their own weight,” Preston said. “We are currently moving in the right direction for whatever option the commission chooses as a part of a separate recommendation.”

Of the two concrete bridges, two timber bridges and one wrought iron bridge that make up the trestle, the timber and wrought iron crossings need work, explained Senior Transportation Engineer Sarah Christensen. The timber trestle bridges have splits in the bracing, or horizontal base, as well as the post, or vertical base, near the bolts. This has caused joints to begin to fail, which means the weight of the bridge has shifted. The wrought iron bridge bearings are causing the bridge distress as they are not able to sway a little as is the idea of the design, Christensen said.

The scope of work as approved by all commissioners Commissioner Randy Johnson will include a detailed bridge inspection, a geotechnical site investigation, a seismic assessment and preparation of plans. The initial cost estimate for the work is $640,000, a figure that will be allocated when staff returns in October for the RTC approval of the Measure D 5-Year Plan.

Public Works Director Matt Machado and his team will work with Christensen and her staff to analyze whether adding the repurposing of the bridge decks with a lightweight option called FRP to the Segment 10 and 11 environmental study is feasible. FRP was used at the San Lorenzo River Bridge Walkway extension on the northern end of the rail corridor, Christensen explained.

Stuck at the station

Throughout the meeting, trail first advocates plead their case to the commissioners, asking them to either railbank, or temporarily remove the tracks, opening public access to the facilities in an efficient manner so that residents and visitors can walk, bike or run through the corridor. Rail and trail advocates asked that the tracks stay and that both types of transit be funded.

Preston’s summary of where the agency lies, however, allowed commissioners to express how frustrated they are that they feel stuck in the situation.

“The supporters of rail want the commission to institute it now, the supporters of trail only want us to institute the trail proposed by Greenway now,” Schiffrin said. “The reality is that the commission doesn’t have the ability to do either. We don’t have the financial ability to do rail and we don’t have the legal ability to do railbanking … we’re inching along, unable to satisfy either constituency the way they want to be satisfied.”

Progressive Rail, Preston said, continues to show that it is interested in backing out of its agreement with RTC and abandoning the rail line as they feel the arrangement is not profitable enough. The agency has not been able to find a suitable company to take over the agreement, including Progressive partner Roaring Camp Railroad as it has not been amenable in the past to maintenance of the full freight easement as described in the contract. In fact, Roaring Camp has shown opposition to the concept of railbanking as their Felton branch line would be disconnected from the corridor.

Because Progressive Rail will not formally withdraw from the agreement, if RTC even had an interest in railbanking, it would have to appeal the situation with the national Surface Transportation Board (STB) and win the right to remove the tracks in a way that would accommodate bringing them back if a future owner desired, Preston added.

“The best way to move forward would be to get all parties to agree,” he said. “We could certainly make arguments (around) the costs of the rail line, but that’s not to say that they’ll be well received by the STB … We are trying to find a way to bring people together so we can work toward a solution. We need to start doing that so we can find a way out of this.”