The SMART train is back on the ballot for 2008. Will voters be more receptive this time around?
From the middle of the tracks, it looks bleak behind the historic downtown depot in Santa Rosa. Grass and weeds hug the rusting ties and 100 yards away, across an expanse of red dirt, a brick building lies crumbling, faded letters declare it the remnants of Corporation Packing Plant No. 5. Unused for decades, to the north, the tracks disappear into the distance toward Eureka; to the south, San Francisco, their thin black lines interrupted only by small groups of bleary-eyed patrons from the nearby coffee shop, perching themselves on the worn ties to catch a spot of sunshine and squint into their morning newspaper.
This scene, however, may change after November, when residents in both Sonoma and Marin counties will get another chance to cast a vote deciding whether to bring a passenger rail service into the North Bay.
Chances are, if you’ve been a resident of either Sonoma or Marin county over the last two years, the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (nicknamed the “SMART” train) has crossed your radar. On the ballot in November 2006 as Measure R, it was supported by 83 percent of voters in Sonoma County, but only 57 percent in Marin, garnering only 65.3 percent of the combined vote in the two counties—a miniscule 1.4 percent short in a campaign requiring a two-thirds vote to pass.
Like Measure R in 2006, the 2008 measure seeks a quarter-cent sales tax increase in the two counties to provide funding for a passenger rail service (and parallel bicycle/pedestrian pathway) running 70 miles from Cloverdale to Larkspur—a total budget of $890 million over the next 20 years. If approved, the train is slated to be up and running by 2014.
So, why, if SMART is such a “smart” idea, did it falter at the polls in 2006? First, a little history.
Blast from the past
The development of the railroad system in the Northern Bay Area can be traced back to the late 1800s, with demand peaking for one of the area’s hottest commodities: lumber. To protect their interests and move lumber and supplies to and from remote logging areas such as Humboldt County, localized railroad companies sprang up and began building tracks, merging to form larger companies with more investment power, and doing it all over again. In 1907, Northwestern Pacific Railroad (NWP) was formed and was the company responsible for building the rail network that ran along the backbone of the Redwood Empire (near the 101 corridor of today), a portion of which still lies behind the depot in downtown Santa Rosa.
In Marin County, NWP ran an interurban commuter line between Marin towns like Tiburon and places like San Francisco, San Rafael and Ross Valley. However, as road systems and the popularity and practicality of automobile travel grew in the 1940s (the Golden Gate Bridge was completed in 1937) and environmental concerns put a damper on the logging industry, ridership and revenue began to fall off, and many sections of the rail network were abandoned.
Flash forward to 2003, when California legislation turned over ownership and operating rights of the former NWP tracks to Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) District, a 12-member board of elected officials from both counties, with clear intentions to turn the derelict transportation corridor into a new passenger rail service connecting Cloverdale to the Larkspur Ferry Terminal.
SMART and its supporters pushed to get a sales tax measure on the 2004 ballot. But it was pushed to the 2006 ballot instead, where hopes that the impact of worsening traffic congestion on Highway 101 and two more years to rally public opinion would prove to be SMART’s ally. It didn’t go as planned. In the flurry of a late-starting campaign and a small but formidable organized opposition force in Marin County, Measure R came up 1,500 votes short.
Try, try again
Like the beating of a tell-tale heart, SMART and its train refuse to go away. In July, the Sonoma-Marin Rail Transit District Board of Directors voted 10-to-1 to place the measure on the 2008 ballot—and this time, SMART is determined that history not be repeated.
“After it failed the first time, our board of directors created an ad-hoc committee and a few new things were suggested,” says Chris Coursey, community outreach and education manager for SMART. One of the most noticeable differences of the 2008 SMART proposal is the addition of weekend train service. “In 2006, the train service was to be five days a week,” says Coursey. “In 2008, it’s a seven-days-a-week passenger train.”
Lisa Wittke-Schaffner, co-chair of the Sonoma County SMART campaign and mayor of Healdsburg, is particularly excited about the possibilities of promoting weekend train travel. “This time, for the North County, the addition of weekend service opens up people’s eyes to other possibilities like tourism and family outings. We have a number of kids who take junior college classes, and a lot of kids who are old enough to travel by themselves but don’t have a car. The weekend service makes it possible for 14-,15- and 16-year-olds to get on a train and meet up with friends in another city,” she says.
Doug Hilberman, president of AXIA Architects in Santa Rosa and the American Institute of Architects Redwood Empire Chapter, echoes the sentiment that embellishing the SMART train’s services was a good idea. From Hilberman’s point of view, weekend train services will bring development to places that have been forgotten in the years since the move toward suburban living. “I think the train will reinforce the urban core and provide much more opportunity to focus activities there,” he says. “I think you’ll see more pedestrian traffic using these trains to get access to urban cores and these activities. [If it passes], from a longer term perspective, five to 10 years out, I think it’s going to have a definitive influence on the direction we grow, from an urban design standpoint, and I think it’s also going to have repercussions that will ripple through our economy.”
One example of an urban redevelopment project currently underway is the Santa Rosa station plan (also called the New Railroad Square project), centered around the historical Santa Rosa depot in Railroad Square. Although community development around other stations in both Marin and Sonoma counties has been talked about (SMART is still discussing possible station locations for southern Novato), right now, there’s no other station development underway on the scale proposed for Santa Rosa. “I think we have property where people say, ‘That would be a great property once the train is here,’” says Wittke-Schaffner of the Healdsburg area, “but we have no proposals right now. The Santa Rosa downtown station plan is the big one. People will be watching to see how that plays out since it’s the first.”
Although it’s not dependent on whether or not a train will eventually find its way through downtown Santa Rosa, the Santa Rosa station plan, aimed at redefining Santa Rosa’s downtown area as a significant destination in the North Bay, will no doubt be helped if tourists from other counties and cities find Santa Rosa’s downtown attractions to be a short train ride away.
“New Railroad Square is a transit-oriented development designed for people to use the train to commute to work,” says Michael Dieden, president of Creative Housing Associates, the Los Angeles firm selected by SMART to be the master developer of the Railroad Square project in 2006. “It’s also designed to be a walkable community, where neighborhood-serving retail is included. Therefore, if the SMART train initiative were to fail in November, while not encouraging, it wouldn’t be fatal for the project’s success.”
Currently in the project’s early development stages, Creative Housing Associates has been joined by Equity Community Builder and the John Stewart Company to form Railroad Square LLC, which, in conjunction with SMART and Santa Rosa Canners LLC (who own the other two parcels of land in question near the station), hopes to secure funding and break ground in the first quarter of 2010.
Plans for Phase One call for a 44,000-square-foot retail and restaurant space, including a public market, hopefully designed by Steve Carlin (San Francisco’s Ferry Building and Napa’s Oxbow Public Market), with 44,000 square feet of office space, 68 units of affordable housing and a 266-space public parking garage. Phase Two will include 118 for-sale condominiums with 181 onsite parking spaces and public use facilities such as a child care center and a bike station where commuters can rent, repair or store their bikes.
Bikes and walking shoes are another component the SMART proposal is using to extend its appeal beyond commuters in 2008. Although the proposed 70-mile bike/pedestrian path that mirrors the rail line has always been in the SMART plans, it’s getting much more attention and interest these days, thanks to skyrocketing gas prices and more people using their bikes or walking to get to work. “I’ve seen commuters riding on 101 in the Novato Narrows,” says Coursey. “I think they’re crazy and heroic at the same time. People need another option.”
Under SMART’s proposal, the paved bike/pedestrian pathway will run parallel to the rail route, with access to all 14 stations. The total cost of the pathway was estimated at $80.4 million in 2006. In the 2008 proposal, the SMART budget covers 100 percent of the cost of the pathway that’s on or adjacent to the SMART right of way—roughly 70 percent of the total cost—with additional portions of the pathway that fall on city streets—around 30 percent—to be covered by the cities and counties they run through. With user estimates at 7,000 a day on weekdays and 10,000 on weekends, the pathway offers a strong recreational incentive to the SMART train proposal. “I like to joke that it’s actually a trail with a rail,” says Charles McGlashan, a Marin County supervisor who also co-chairs the bi-county campaign to pass the SMART measure. “I really dream of the day I can ride my bike to Santa Rosa,” he says. “The idea of Marin being connected to the entire North Coast is a joy—and will be healthier to boot.”
A whole new ball game
But it’s not just what’s new for the 2008 proposal, but how the campaign is being executed. In contrast to 2006, whose relatively subdued and late-starting campaign confused a lot of voters, this time SMART is making sure it has all the answers. “The big failure in 2006 was that no one knew what the proposal was,” says McGlashan. Insufficient information about the measure left voters vulnerable to opposition campaigns and falsehoods, particularly in Marin. McGlashan says the 2008 campaign won’t allow for that margin of error.
“In the years after [it failed], SMART did a lot of white papers in response to what it realized voters didn’t know,” says Cynthia Murray, CEO of North Bay Leadership Council. These included an updated superior expenditures plan and an environmental impact report (EIR), as well as revising how SMART reaches out to voters. “We’ll be canvassing with more information and arming everybody we can reach with the proper information. We’ll be much more involved in making sure people know what the real proposal is,” says McGlashan. The day I spoke with McGlashan in August, he’d been working on “a cover letter for a binder [about the SMART train and pathway] that will get into the hands of every elected official in Marin County.” (In Sonoma County, it will be available on an “as-needed basis,” and the same information is available to download from the SMART website). The binder contains all 18 white papers detailing the proposal, from issues about train noise and pollution to the funding plan and the impact trains will have on surrounding public transportation. McGlashan is determined that officials in Marin “actually know the truth” this time.
Education and voter outreach are the keys to SMART’s success in 2008. “Our polling clearly shows support increases with education,” says Dennis Rosatti, executive director of Sonoma County Conservation Action (SCCA) and co-chair for the Sonoma County SMART campaign. “The SMART board, to its credit, did a lot of community outreach after 2006 to address voters’ issues,” says Rosatti.
Armed with new insight about the shortcomings of the 2006 campaign, SCCA launched a door-to-door education campaign in August in Marin to head-off the same situation in 2008. “Right now, recent polling says 77 percent of voters overall in both Marin and Sonoma counties support SMART,” says Rosatti, “but that statistic is before any education has happened. It will only go up from here.”
With major players at the table—the North Bay Leadership Council, the Sonoma County Conservation Action, Sonoma County Alliance, the Marin County Bicycle Coalition, the North Bay Labor Council and the Transportation Authority of Marin—Murray says SMART has put itself in a better position, “If you look at the campaign this time, it’s a much stronger coalition—environmentalists, business, labor, bicyclists—it’s broader and more organized. I feel we’ll achieve the amount of direct voter contact its takes to get voters to understand why SMART is a good choice.”
Proof behind the numbers
On top of two more years of streamlining its campaign, SMART’s also re-evaluated its financial foundation. “We have a thoroughly independently analyzed financial plan now,” says McGlashan, referring to the financial plan put together by KNN Finance, which was hired to help SMART maximize its budget and create a financial plan that needs no further state money (and very limited federal support, as well). “We know [the proposal] is financially sound on the quarter cent, and that it will in no way threaten bus transit plans or other transit plans in either county. It’s a robust and solid financial plan,” he says.
“The project is more expensive two years down the road,” says Coursey, “but now we have audited figures on both Sonoma and Marin’s sales tax collections,” giving the SMART board a sound idea of how much revenue its proposal can raise.
“We’re reassured by our funding plans that we can [succeed] within the constraints we’ve set for ourselves,” confirms McGlashan.
Success in unlikely places
Nevertheless, the new SMART proposal is by no means a sure thing come November. On top of the tightening of pocketbooks in the face of economic downturn, the state budget meltdown, and the necessity to get the same difficult two-thirds vote they needed in 2006, SMART officials fear the proposal has the potential to get overlooked by voters altogether. “There are more than 10 measures on the ballot for November,” says Murray. “People will have to work their way all the way through the ballot to find SMART [near the end] and will still need to have the enthusiasm to vote on it.”
Rosatti echoes Murray’s apprehensions, “I think that’s really the biggest challenge. It’ll be a huge voter turn-out this year, but we have to convince them to vote all the way through the ballot.”
Coursey points out that as much as smaller pocketbooks can hurt SMART at the ballot box this November, they can also help SMART get people’s attention like never before. “Driving is now economically out of the picture for many people,” says Coursey. “The pay at some jobs is becoming no longer worth the commute. Lights have gone on over people’s heads, and they’re thinking, ‘There must be another way.’
“The SMART train has been talked about for 20 years in this area,” continues Coursey. “[In 2006], 65 percent of voters said they wanted it. In any other election, that’s a landslide. County officials have recognized the fiscally beneficial use of a public asset. It’s not an inexpensive undertaking, but, compared to adding freeway lanes, it’s a bargain.”
Whether or not the two-thirds majority needed to pass the SMART measure in November will agree with Coursey remains to be seen, but campaigners are confident SMART’s time has come—and they seem to have found many receptive voters.
“People are coming to terms with the threat of climate change and environmental change and the horrendous [freeway] gridlock in Marin,” says McGlashan. “They’re realizing that even if they don’t sit in a traffic jam, it matters if everyone else does.”
“Highway 101 is ranked the fourth most congested corridor in the North Bay out of nine counties,” says Murray. “There’s now more traffic congestion than ever before.” And, ultimately, too much time spent in traffic is becoming a bottom-line issue.
“Major employers get it,” says McGlashan. “Hour-long commutes are bad for business and bad for the taxpayer. Every car we get off the road is one less headache.”
Under SMART’s proposal, nine shuttles will be provided from stations to places of employment, schools, hospitals and shopping centers, with others expected by employers.
“Right now, there’s some very preliminary talk that, if SMART passes, some employers in Marin would meet the train with vans,” says McGlashan. This vanpool, says McGlashan, has the potential not only to rid the freeway of some of the hundreds of cars a day that commute from Sonoma County to Marin, but would let employees get to their jobs an hour faster. Hilberman, as an employer in Santa Rosa, echoes this sentiment: “From the standpoint of AXIA and my employees, I see this being very beneficial, especially in drawing employees from different regions to our office. I think you’ll see businesses congregate around these towns with train stations, because employees will have an easier time getting there.”
“This is a proposal not only for residents of Marin and Sonoma, but for employers and seniors,” emphasizes McGlashan. “This is a proposal to get a new transportation network going and SMART is the critical spine to get this started. Imagine a day when a senior can get to Sonoma and back with no car.”
Wittke-Schaffner agrees the commute of today may quickly become the commute of the past. “I think people are tired of being in a car,” she says. “Time is very valuable in this world, and sitting down on a train lets people do different things on their way to work or to a meeting.” Although many of us have witnessed time-pressed commuters reading meeting notes and reports, doing their make-up or working on their laptops (or all three at once) while stuck in their cars in traffic, commuting via SMART train would make all of these things legal—and much safer.
“I think freeway congestion is going to be an economic bottleneck pretty soon, limiting the transportation of people and materials,” says Hilberman. “I think SMART is part of the solution as we go down this pathway of viable transportation alternatives in an attempt to not to paint ourselves into a corner.”
“People need an option,” says Wittke-Schaffner, “They’re trying to be conscious of their decisions. This is a positive way to be spending tax dollars. People know their money will stay local and influence things that will directly affect them.”
“I dream of the day when Marin residents can look north and see they’re connected to a beautiful county that’s been blocked by hideous freeway gridlock,” says McGlashan. “It gives us a new vision of what transportation can be for our two counties.”
