My understanding of the depot park project was that yes, ultimately Santa Cruz would love to have commuter rail. And in the meantime it was a project that tied in nicely with Santa Cruz's current push to tie the beachfront/wharf area to the downtown/Pacific Ave. area (trying to draw tourists and foot traffic from the beach towards downtown businesses) After the renovated freight shed and parking lot and playground/bike park was finished they recently repaved lower Pacific Ave, installed a roundabout in front of the park, rebuilt the retaining wall on the west side of Pacific Ave so as to have room for a sidewalk, built the Monterey Bay Marine Sanctuary building right at the Pacific Ave. grade crossing, and are planning to build another roundabout right at the foot of the wharf where Pacific Ave. meets the tracks and Beach St. They also bought one of those bus/trolley things that runs between downtown and the beach all day which you can ride for 25 cents. (The irony of this is sickening as it drives right on the old Union Traction Co. streetcar route from downtown to the beach and passes the location where the car barn used to be) All of this is a kind of push to gentrify what was once kind of a lousy neighborhood separating the main tourist draw from the main business district.
There have been murmurs at times about building a replica of the Santa Cruz depot that burned down in the 1980's, and in the meantime the freight shed gets used for community events.