Self-interest behind opposition to corridor public transit

I’ve been concerned for some time about the huge investments of effort and money that have been pumped into the political campaign to prevent future public transportation in the county-wide railroad corridor owned by the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission (RTC).

We’re talking about a planned light rail system with emissions-free battery- electric vehicles, along a 32-mile corridor designed for movement in both directions simultaneously. It’s a long-range plan. It won’t be built any time soon. And, mind you, freight railroad operations are no longer a commercial option. That’s history. The public plan now is for an advanced passenger ultra-light rail system to be built someday, with a protected pedestrian/cycling pathway alongside; the pathway, or “trail,” is under construction now.

But lo and behold - well-financed political forces are being mobilized against anything like a public transit system, ever. The nay-sayers want the whole railroad corridor to be abandoned and used permanently for “trail- only” purposes.

For a long time, I could make no sense of it. What for?

It looks like hundreds of thousands of dollars, and maybe more, have been spent in the propaganda campaign against public transportation. Why has there been such an expensive, sustained effort in the private sector to prevent progress in the public sector? Big money is being mobilized. Who benefits?

Most of the funding for sabotage of the public interest appears to have come from “Greenway.” The local investor and philanthropist Bud Colligan controls Greenway. An associate of Colligan’s, Brian C. Peoples, controls “Trail Now,” an internet presence that is obviously a propaganda mill for the benefit of Manu Koenig and the Greenway group.

Whoever they are, they’ve put a whole hell of a lot of dark money into Greenway and Trail Now. Manu Koenig was Greenway’s executive director before they bought him a seat on the

Board of Supervisors.

I ask, where’s the payoff for all that investment in negative propaganda? Why go to the trouble of staging a costly political firestorm to derail a progressive public works project that has been under way for more than 20 years? Again, who benefits?

I had not a clue what all their efforts were really about, until I discovered a very significant document, which exists in the public record of staff correspondence of the RTC.

In 2014, Peoples, the solo propagandist of “Trail Now,” Manu Koenig’s recent election PAC, presented an unsolicited purchase offer to the RTC on behalf of a shadowy collective he called “Aptos Rail Trail Investors Group,” in which he detailed their plan to buy the entire 32-mile public railroad corridor for private profit, and to sell off miles of the corridor on both ends to owners of adjoining agricultural land, and commercial real estate developers.

In my opinion, this is glaringly suggestive of some seriously self-interested political manipulation.

The RTC demurred, by the way, saying the corridor is not for sale. End of story. But is it?

It’s pretty clear to me that the years-long “Greenway/

Trail Now” political project is the work of a small group of wealthy collaborators and their social media minions. It stinks.

I think they believe they can force the RTC by means of political bullying and harassment to discontinue planning for public rail transit, including tearing up the tracks, and then they and their accomplices, owners of land adjoining the railroad corridor, believe they can cause reversions of the public land titles, turning pieces of the corridor over to private land owners, and to commercial developers.

This is what Peoples offered explicitly, and it is concerning that a number of the most active promoters of the “trailonly” campaign do indeed own real property adjoining the railroad corridor. Some of these are agricultural and industrial land holdings; some are residential properties in Aptos. That’s circumstantial evidence, of course, but the facts are worth adducing, and they point in the same direction.

If they had their way, there would be a chaos of lawsuits over ownership of pieces of the railroad corridor. The public estate would be besieged by greedy claimants. Only lawyers would benefit in the end.

It seems to me that outcome may well be what Peoples, Koenig, and the principals of Greenway are all about. It’s not hard to understand how their agitating strikes a sympathetic chord among some working- class folk, who may lack a vested interest in real property adjoining the railroad, but still are vehement that they just don’t want a public transit system in their neighborhood.

Well, of course they don’t. That’s standard NIMBYism. Self-interest 101.

I hope we can rise above this selfish, divisive, reactionary politics, and secure unto our progeny the real potentiality of a public transit system in the railroad corridor, at such future time as it becomes feasible.