There is a rail line running from the mainline at Pajaro/Watsonville up through Santa Cruz and thence to Davenport ... however it is in terrible shape.

There are efforts to resurrect it back to operating as a passenger service - light rail cars (probably hydrogen powered), ground level boarding, but quite infrequent (30 minute gap.)

There is a war between the bicycle people who want to pave over the tracks so that our local Jefs can race up and back (regular bike riders don't count much around here) and that effort is led by people with an interest in the bike rental business - not small companies, think Uber. Never heard of "big bike" before? We've got it, and they want to leave us with only gung-ho bike and highway on traffic jams.

There are some real issues - like that the bridges over the coastal creeks (and there are a lot of those) are really old and in bad shape - the estimate price tag is on the order of a few $billion to get the rail line up and running. That seems excessive to me, but when amortized over many decades it is a lot cheaper than ever expanding our one main highway.

We do have a decent bus system - it runs all the way from the border with Monterey county up to the San Mateo county border. And there is a quite popular run over highway 17 to San Jose.

I live just outside of a group of small cities. The region has Metro which reaches out to the suburbs, but has few lines, so stations are few the farther from the center. I'm lucky to have a station about 1km from the house. Easily walkable by me.
The county and WMATA ( Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority ) runs buses that fill in between stations and feed Metro stations and other 'areas of commerce and interest'. During rush hour wait times are not bad, but off rush the wait times can be 1/2 hour or more. Transfers between county and metro are possible. The nearest city ( 3km ) has their own Dash bus as well as a wheeled 'trolly' for tourists. So potentially a person could take a county bus to a metro station where a city bus could take them closer to their destination. Three modes in just a few miles, each with it's own schedule and fare system. It can take hours to go just a few miles.
I take Metro when I think it is the best way, cost time, or ease.. Parking at or near many venues can be very expensive and a rail fare might jut be a few dollars each way. But Metro can take a lot longer due to transfer to different lines. A 30 minute drive in traffic can take over an hour, just in that mode. Thankfully hours have been extended and most of the deferred maintenance is finally done so it's more reliable. For a while Metro could get you to Here a shuttle bus would get you to the next open station. Repeat on the way home. A 10mile (16km ) Metro trip suddenly would take an hour one way and 1.5-2 hours on return ( after an 11pm+ show completion, ugh ).
In DC there is LRT, but it's more for show than go. Similar attempts have been made in Maryland with huge cost overruns mostly caused by anti rail activist ( astroturf ) lawsuits.
The only thing that has been built in years are more Toll roads paralleling congested highways. They Always get approved, always.

€13 for a day pass sounds pricey to me. Our local (vastly inferior to Paris) system is a week for about that price.

I thought Baltimore transit was a joke til I moved to Florida.

The transit system here is evolving. Between the time we started house-hunting here ~8 years ago and now, almost 4 years (!!) into our residence, the buses went from airport shuttle type to actual full-size transit buses. Well, smallish as transit buses go, but you know what I mean. The line we live off of goes to the local transit hub, which is Walmart 🤨 If only I could wrap my brain around a bus schedule, I could get places in times of vehicle breakdown 🫤 but then buses are peopley, meh.

I wonder if they ever added the outlet mall to the bus route? Yes, really, the county council actually had a debate about it. You know your local culture is car-centric when they slap up a huge commercial development nowhere near residences, then don't grok why the bus needs to go there.

We also have door-to-door disability transit—which I should probably sign Mr. Stranger up for at some point. They seem to want official documentation we don't have yet. Plus you have to request rides in advance, which is not a thing I'm good at.

On the other side of the county, there is light rail that goes into and beyond the nearest "big" city (Orlando). There is an occasional bus from one side of the county to the other, but I'm not sure if they go all the way out to the train station (shared with Amtrak) yet. At the Orlando end, they are working on a connection to the high-speed rail that goes to Miami and will eventually go to Tampa. Yes, that same rail system that is stonewalling the workers' union.

10 or 15 years ago, we would have looked forward to jumping on a train and taking a day trip. Now that it's close to fruition, we're in no condition to attempt it. sigh

The ferries are pricier

Mamdani made a remark that sounded like the ferries were free 🤔 now I wonder what he really meant

the estimate price tag is on the order of a few $billion to get the rail line up and running. That seems excessive to me, but when amortized over many decades it is a lot cheaper than ever expanding our one main highway.

The only thing that has been built in years are more Toll roads paralleling congested highways. They Always get approved, always.

SO MUCH THIS
roads vs. trains is more or less the equivalent of war vs. healthcare/arts/housing/food—seems there's always money for the former but never the latter

and, at least around here, when they get arm-twisted into rail, it's designed to fail—limited frequency, and little night/weekend service

Baltimore is decidedly pedestrian-hostile.

YEP... and the burbs are worse

Traveling south on Amtrak requires a “We’ll get there” sort of attitude. It is slow. There is an Autotrain that snowbirds use to get to Florida with a car, sans driving there. That starts a few miles from here.

indeed, I hopped a Silver whatever (one of 2 similar routes) from Orlando to DC, and it was about 20 hrs (contrast: back in the days before Acela, I got from Bmore to Boston in about 6h)
however
hopped the other Silver whatever coming back—vaguely similar overall time, but woke up in the middle of the night and it seemed like we were going kinda fast—got informed by Mr. Stranger, who was following along online, that we were doing 120 😳

so, slow, and yet... not 😬

we had to pull over quite a bit for freighters and the auto train, not to mention stopping at every little station along the way (and a water on/sewage off stop in Jacksonville... and mass bathroom cleaning, because people are pigs who don't understand/care that unflushed toilets slop out on a moving vehicle... we were down to like one usable bathroom in 3 cars or something)

side note—I think MARC is below Amtrak on the pull-over totem pole, which explains a lot

I have not yet tried the auto train, mostly due to pets

there is no rail to the air port. How big an oversight is that?”
Melbourne has this problem as well.
We don’t have train to the airport either! Any of them.

ok I take back what I said about Baltimore... the train is not exactly convenient to the airport, but it's on the premises—and they also have a bus that runs to a DC Metro station

There was a study done and the best system for s city is size would be an in demand system.

the county we moved away from just announced that they are keeping only a handful of main-drag bus lines and switching mostly to on-demand

our current county is trialing an on-demand system on the other side of the rural divide—I doubt they'll open that can of worms here in tourist-land