By Ellen Martinez, Dr. Steven Plumb, Lisa Sheridan, Robert Stephens & Gayle Ortiz
Measure D is the right solution, right now to build a bike and pedestrian trail on the unused rail corridor.
The Greenway plan to build a 32-mile trail, accessible to all, is fully funded and can be built now. The trail will preserve the natural landscape and showcase the beauty of our coastline. It will be an amazing community transportation resource, as is the 18-mile Monterey Coastal Trail, built in the 1980s on unused railroad tracks, and now used by over 2 million people per year.
Greenway does not detour onto busy streets, making it the safest route to schools and work. It also promotes the health of our community. That’s why more than 200 doctors support Greenway. The head of the Department of Surgery at Dominican Hospital commented, “A car-free pathway from Watsonville to Davenport will do more to improve the duration and quality of residents’ lives than any health care program in the history of Santa Cruz County.”
A YES vote will move more people out of cars and reduce traffic, which supports the County’s goal to increase the percentage of commuters on bikes to 20%, cutting air pollution.
Leading environmentalists support Measure D because it is the ecological trail proposal.
The train and trail plan, if ever built, will result in heavy industrialization of the corridor with concrete retaining walls, fences separating neighborhoods, and cutting down hundreds of heritage trees.
The highly negative and misleading campaign against the Greenway Initiative is a smokescreen to hide 10 years of failure in implementing a trail on the rail corridor. Only 1.5 of 32 miles of trail has been built, a dismal track record.
Santa Cruz County does not have the ridership — or $1.3 billion — needed to replace nearly all tracks and bridges, build stations and parking lots, and operate a passenger rail line.
This is an unrealistic “plan” that will never be sufficiently funded. And it will divert scarce funds from our current public transit systems, Metro and ParaCruz, as well as county roads and Hwy 1.
Greenway will preserve future rail options through railbanking, a federal program used by hundreds of communities across the nation.
Let’s Move Forward Now and vote YES on Measure D. A YES vote is the fastest way to get people moving in a safe, healthy and inclusive way.
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Learn more at yes-greenway.org
CON: tpgonlinedaily.com/vote-no-on-measure-d-greenway-initiative