Greenway Advocates have gone to considerable effort and expense to promote their vision of a bike and hike pathway in the UP corridor after the tracks have been removed. My position is that there probably is no greater civic crime that could be committed than to remove those tracks. The absolute best use is for a trolley line covering at least the Watsonville to Santa Cruz’ West side with stops at every cross street in between; and small shuttle buses running at frequent intervals on short routes along the cross streets connecting the tracks to the neighborhoods. The Greenway Advocates present a false comparison by assuming that public transit, if it ever happens, means Train, with a locomotive pulling passenger cars. This would be logical if there were not a quarter of 1 million or so citizens of Santa Cruz County living within walking distance of the track itself. Considering that fact and using the Greenway format, the advantages of trolley cars and shuttle buses are overwhelming:
Safe: trolley cars, pedestrians, and bicyclists have shared the road all over the world for generations…to this very day. The ability of a trolley car to stop in such a short distance eliminates the safety factor that would exist with either a train or buses.
Affordable: if the track in its current condition can handle a heavy locomotive and passenger cars, certainly it can easily handle a little trolley car. For for this reason, the necessary repairs to put a trolley on that line tomorrow are mostly nominal and routine.
Transit: whereas a Greenway can easily accommodate “thousands” of bike and pedestrian users a day as quoted by Greenway advocates, a trolley line would serve hundreds of thousands.
Equity: as with the claim for a Greenway, no new taxes would be required to establish the trolley system. Rolling stock can be obtained by lease without any outlay of cash, assuming the creditworthiness of the Regional Transportation Commission or the County of Santa Cruz, or both. Otherwise, the trolley line can be incorporated, call it the Metrolink, with a public stock offering to raise working capital, still with no new taxes.
Future options: the options are virtually unlimited as long as the tracks are there. Pull up those cracks and all is lost. To replace the tracks (as they are discovering in the Los Angeles metropolitan area) costs multiple millions which we don’t have and will not need as long as those tracks are in place.
Environment: modern trolleys create less noise, by far, than a diesel or propane powered bus or any locomotive. Exhaust emissions are, also avoided.
Beauty: the point here is that a trolley is no less beautiful than a train, but neither would a trolley detract from the natural beauty of the corridor, especially in the undeveloped areas.
Health: hiking and biking are certainly healthy activities. Nothing about an electric trolley car would in any way diminish the opportunity for both in the same right-of-way as a Metrolink trolley.
For lack of a better label, we use the term Metrolink because the trolley cars would form a valuable, nay priceless, link to the rest of our Metro system. If the RTC could see fit to declare that the public transit choice will be electric trolley cars, not locomotives pulling trains, then organizational work could begin immediately
Howard F. Sosbee 1400 Weston Ridge Road Scotts Valley CA, 95066 831, 335, 8401 hfs@sosbee.com
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