Greenway’s disinformation campaign

I support the longstanding public transit project planned by the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) to build an electric light rail system in the countywide Santa Cruz Branch Line railroad corridor that we purchased with state funding in 2012. We own it. The State of California purchased it for us to develop for public transportation. Established public policy is to improve it for passenger rail transit.

I am appalled that ever since then, a well-funded but shadowy private sector 501(c)4 political action committee calling itself “Greenway” is and has been dedicated to a disinformation campaign against public rail transit, pressuring the RTC commissioners to abandon their public trust in service of the greater California state rail transit plans.

Greenway vigorously demonize a community interest group called FORT — “Friends of the Rail and Trail” — but Greenway’s real political adversary is the RTC. Greenway is a political action campaign against the public interest and the integrity of our public institutions.

I believe Greenway is a special-interest group motivated, at least in part, by a deeply held private sector belief that all land equals potential real estate that can and should be subject to “market” forces, creating private wealth through transactional appreciation in value and by private development.

That’s why so many vested interests in the real estate sector locally support Greenway. The publicly owned railroad corridor is presently free of the effects of such forces. The corridor is a public transportation infrastructure asset that was purposely acquired for use for public rail transit.

RTC plans also include an ancillary bike and pedestrian pathway or trail alongside the railroad tracks that is now being built. But Greenway doesn’t like that trail plan. Greenway wants more. Greenway’s fantasy plan would entail converting almost all of the publicly owned corridor to use as a three-lane divided highway only for personal transportation by pedestrians and cyclists.

That would not be public transportation. In that scenario, the corridor could not be owned and improved by the RTC — our public transportation planning agency could not be responsible for a “linear park” in place of public transit. Nor is any other local public agency suited for that project. Our County Parks Department, limited in scope as it is, will not ever have the means or the political will to build and operate a 32-mile recreational “Greenway” that precludes public transit.

For Greenway’s purposes, the ownership of the railroad corridor now belonging to the RTC would have to be transferred to — guess who — a private sector organization — maybe a “Greenway” nonprofit, no doubt controlled by the wealthy coterie of Greenway insiders. Public infrastructure funding will definitely not be available in any imaginable scenario for creation of a recreational parkway in the railroad corridor.

Where, then, would the construction and operational funding for building the alternative “Greenway” come from? Presently available Measure D funding would not be available for it, despite Greenway’s assertions to the contrary. Who would pay the RTC (meaning the State of California) to reimburse the public sector for the multiple tens of millions of dollars already invested in the railroad corridor, rail trail, and railroad tracks?

Now Greenway is promoting signature gathering for a ballot measure that would simply delete all references to public rail transit from the County General Plan — and lying about their objectives in a systematic way.

It seems to me Greenway’s game is to obliterate the RTC’s public transportation project so that when it all falls apart, the private sector will sweep up the pieces and cash in.

My advice to anyone reading who is not a wealthy real estate investor or a privatesector ideologue is this: Do not sign the Greenway petition.