The Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission mostly rejected a Civil Grand Jury report that accused the agency of decades of unrealistic planning, incomplete cost estimates and poor communication surrounding the Santa Cruz Branch Rail Line.
Of the Grand Jury’s 17 findings, the RTC agreed with just five, partially disagreed with eight and fully disagreed with four. The RTC also maintained that seven of the Grand Jury’s eight recommendations had already been implemented.
The RTC even disagreed that a 12-member governing board could result in deadlocked votes and rejected a recommendation to change it do an odd number.
The responses were prepared by RTC staff and an ad hoc committee consisting of commissioners Kimberly DeSerpa, Gerry Jensen, Manu Koenig, Fred Keeley and Chair Eduardo Montesino. They were presented to the full commission Sept. 3. The agency has until Sept. 28 to submit its response to the presiding judge of Santa Cruz County Superior Court and the Grand Jury.
The Grand Jury’s report, “The Santa Cruz Branch Rail Line: Competing Visions, Emerging Realities,” concluded that the RTC spent years considering options that were not sufficiently grounded in the corridor’s engineering, physical, legal and financial constraints.
The report pointed to a nearly tenfold increase in passenger rail cost estimates. The RTC’s 2021 Transit Corridor Alternatives Analysis placed capital costs at roughly $480 million, while the much more detailed 2025 Zero Emission Passenger Rail and Trail report estimated the 22-mile project at approximately $4.28 billion. The earlier report acknowledged that no engineering had been performed to support its estimate.
The 2025 estimate also included about $34 million to $41 million in annual operating expenses, depending on whether a 20% contingency was applied.
The RTC partially disagreed with the Grand Jury’s finding that its early studies failed to accurately estimate passenger rail costs and led to major decisions being made without a complete financial picture.
The agency did not dispute that the early estimates were inaccurate, but rejected any fault for it. Instead, it said it lacked money for extensive engineering studies before voters approved Measure D, the county’s half-cent transportation sales tax, in 2016.
“Development of projects occurs over time that starts with high, planning-level work, followed by sequentially more detailed work based on availability of resources,” the RTC’s response said. “As time goes on, cost estimates become more accurate.”
The RTC agreed that the $4.3 billion estimate requires the agency and community to reconsider the project’s feasibility, funding and implementation. However, it said passenger rail remains part of its long-term vision and that it would continue seeking opportunities to advance the project when funding and other conditions allow.
The commission strongly rejected the Grand Jury’s broader conclusion that it lacked a unified strategy and had been “gripped by political paralysis.”
The RTC said its 25-year Regional Transportation Plan serves as its “true north” for allocating transportation money. It also cited its December 2025 decision to pursue an interim trail over the tracks in some areas while preserving passenger rail as a long-term goal.
“The adopted vision for the branch line corridor is passenger and freight rail with a multi-use trail,” the response said. “Last December the Commission directed staff to implement this vision of both rail and trail — near-term trail and long-term rail, in a phased manner.”
The RTC also rejected the Grand Jury’s finding that it historically failed to give the public complete and accurate information about the financial, engineering and legal challenges associated with developing the corridor, especially during the 2022 Measure D campaign.
The report charged that, as a result, other advocacy groups came up with their own numbers and the public now struggles to understand what the actual costs will be.
The agency rejected this notion and said the groups just hold differing viewpoints and interpretations of projects and not because of inadequate information from the RTC. It said it has strengthened its communication and public engagement practices in recent years.
The RTC did agree with findings that the rail infrastructure has deteriorated, that the agency historically operated primarily as a planning organization, that it lacks enough money to accomplish all its transportation priorities and that inflation and unexpected engineering requirements forced it to pursue less costly interim trail designs. It also agreed that the $4.3 billion estimate was substantially higher than earlier projections.
But the agency partially rejected findings about its lack of rail-building and property-management experience, staffing limitations, corridor constraints and susceptibility to tied votes. It fully rejected the conclusion that commissioners’ competing agendas have made it difficult to build institutional knowledge and make timely progress.
The RTC said its board composition is established by state law, tied votes have rarely occurred and its purpose is not always to reach consensus.
“The goal is not to always achieve consensus,” the response said, “rather it is to reflect diverse opinions and needs of the region the RTC serves.”