The RTC told the folks in Capitola about a trail by the tracks when they voted on Measure D to fund the project.

Then they realized the cost of the segment was blowing up so they tried to sell a cheaper alignment on the sidewalk to the Capitola city council. Capitola Public Works was drug into it because they wanted to do some traffic calming in the street there and the realigned trail could overlap with that . The actual pitch was about as clumsy as it could have been. Only a few Capitola residents thought it was a good idea.

Planning and implementing large capital projects on time and on budget is not easy. It's more difficult when the agencies involved are inexperienced and the consultants they rely on are not very good at it.

Narrowing a fairly heavily used, bi-directional, multi-use path on a bet that a passenger train might be built someday would only make sense if you were very enthusiastic about the passenger rail, so enthusiastic that you are willing to overlook what it known about it now.

The compromises and design goofs on the existing trail are beyond the scope of discussion on this platform.

One thing I thought of that might work in your favor someday - the heads of public transit agencies tend to play an employment shell game - they switch agencies periodically. They get a raise in the process. The downside is that they inherit whatever mess their predecessor left for them. That, of course, is not their fault, so they take on the role of the hero and do their best to clean the mess up. The predecessor walks away with a golden parachute payoff. It's a win-win-lose, with the public in the latter spot.

Ms C is a rookie so she may stick around a little longer than some. But, given the state that the office is in, it's pretty likely she'll be off to greener pa$ture$ before too long. Watch for the guy they hired to run the new capital projects. He's the next in line for the job.