Curious passengers packed SMART’s new railcars for free preview rides in the summer of 2017. The soft launch was just weeks before the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit train officially opened for business on Aug. 25 of that year, and riders traveling from the Marin Civic Center station to Rohnert Park found a smooth ride and light-filled, comfortable cars with views of vineyards and grazing cattle—as well as a trail of cars creeping northward on Highway 101 as the train sped by.
Residents of Marin and Sonoma counties had been without passenger trains for decades, so SMART was a new option for transportation, and once regular service started, ridership began to grow steadily. Just weeks later, though, on Oct. 9, the Tubbs Fire raced through north Santa Rosa, and SMART was forced to cancel service to avoid heavy smoke, which made conditions dangerous, and allow evacuations. Wildfires were one of SMART’s early challenges, as were the public safety power shutoffs that Pacific Gas Electric instituted the following year to prevent the risk of the company’s equipment sparking fires if tree branches came into contact with live lines during high winds. But the new rail service adapted and continued to do so when COVID-19 struck, keeping most people at home and leading to a rise in remote work. Despite the setbacks, however, SMART persevered and continued its efforts to make the train an easy, accessible way to travel for North Bay riders and visitors.
One of Cumins’ first steps was to hold a series of listening sessions with members of the public. Those took place in April 2022, and the strategy proved to be productive. “We received some really good feedback. We identified the things we need to be focused on,” he says. The result was a concentration on four strategic objectives: ridership, pathways, extensions and freight. Then, to define those objectives further, SMART held a session on each one and gathered information to create a SMART house that is a structure for its priorities and principles. Thus, the roof is the vision statement: “Smarter Transportation for a Smarter Future,” and below it, in the ceiling, is the mission statement: “We connect communities.” The foundation is SMART’s values: safety, integrity, stewardship and continuous improvement, and the living area contains the objectives. He reports that the process was valuable, not only for providing a focus, but leading to more clarity. After extensive discussions on improving communications about the train to the public, members of the agency’s board of directors concluded that SMART’s overall goal is to create an innovative transportation system that will be integrated into the community.
Ridership
By May 2021, many of the measures to contain COVID-19 had become less stringent, and SMART launched a Welcome Back campaign to encourage people to ride the train. The agency introduced an expanded service schedule with more weekday trips, resumed Saturday service and offered passengers a 40 percent discount on fares. In May 2022, following the listening sessions, Cumins also removed parking fees at SMART lots. Then, in August 2022, SMART announced that it was extending the reduced fares and suspension of paid parking to June 30, 2023. “The goal was to make sure fares weren’t a barrier,” he says, and dropping parking fees helped make riding the train more reasonable.
For current riders, the big challenge is getting to and from their final destination—the first and last mile. Cumins sees micro-transit as way for SMART to fill that gap and reports that planning is underway for a micro-transit project to connect the Santa Rosa Airport SMART station with the Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport. Unlike the train, the service won’t be on a fixed schedule or follow a specific route. Rather, a passenger will use a smart phone, like they do when they use Uber and Lyft for ridesharing, or call customer service to book a trip. A vehicle will be waiting for them at the SMART station, and while one person might need to go to the airport, another might want to go to a hotel, and so technology will design the route to take passengers to their individual destinations near the station. “I think it will be a big hit,” says Cumins, observing that the number of people flying out of the airport is huge, and the ability to serve them is important.
Bicycle sharing is also in the works, and SMART is working with the Sonoma County Transportation Authority and the Transit Authority of Marin to offer 300 electric bikes in the Marin-Sonoma Bikeshare Pilot. Suzanne Smith, executive director of SCTA, explains that three models for bike sharing are possible. In one, a passenger can take a bike from a dock and return it to another dock. The second option is dockless, with bikes that have geo-sensors to determine the boundaries of the area where a bike can go. “You can grab a bike and take it to your office,” she says, explaining that they come with locks, so riders can park a bike in a place that’s convenient and leave it until the time comes to return to the train. The third model includes scooters, and stations can have more bikes or more scooters, depending on what an individual city or town wants. Santa Rosa already has scooters, which are working well, and so do Windsor and Healdsburg. Smith says that a launch date has not yet been set, and the earliest service could begin is spring of 2023.
“It will help with the first and last mile piece,” says Cumins, pointing out that regardless of what passengers are doing or where they’re going, they’ll have another form of transportation to meet their needs.
Opponents of SMART believe that rail service in the North Bay will never have enough riders to make it viable. “SMART is the least cost-effective transit operator in the Bay Area,” says Novato resident Mike Arnold, an economist and vocal SMART critic, who has analyzed the data. “The structural challenge is that the train only operates in suburbia. You spend a lot of money, and you don’t get a lot of riders,” he explains, estimating that the current cost to SMART per boarding is more than $60. He adds that to attract enough riders, passenger rail has to serve a major employment center where people can walk from transit centers to their jobs. Ridership is increasing, but it’s also unpredictable, because many downtown office workers have hybrid schedules and spend some days working remotely instead of commuting. “Nobody knows what’s going to happen when the dust settles,” he says.
He acknowledges that people love trains but believes the positive comments SMART advocates make aren’t connected to reality. “It’s about the economics of passenger rail, not politics,” he says. “It’s not good use of tax dollars and never will be.” SMART’s budget for fiscal year 2022 reports that its largest source of funding—78 percent— comes from sales and use taxes, while only 2 percent comes from fares. (Visit sonomamarintrain.org and click on Financial Documents.) SMART projects that it will receive an estimated $42,074,000 in sales/use taxes this year, and while it’s common for public transit systems to receive financial support from federal, state and local governments, opponents believe the taxpayer subsidy it receives is excessive and unsustainable. Arnold points out that SMART needs to pass a tax extension measure before Measure Q funding expires in 2029, and voters will determine the SMART train’s future.
Pathways and extensions
Part of SMART’s mandate is to build a bicycle and pedestrian path parallel to the railway tracks. SMART and its partner agencies have so far built 25 miles of pathway along the railroad right-of-way, and they connect communities, making them a safe way for cyclists to travel. Each two-car train has space for 24 bikes, so the pathways also provide cyclists with first and last mile access to train stations. A new section that goes under the freeway in Petaluma opened on October 22, and a stretch from Payran to Lakeville streets in Petaluma will come next, with its projected opening in early 2023. Grant-funded construction will also begin on pathways connecting Rohnert Park with Southwest Santa Rosa and Penngrove to Petaluma in late 2023.
One of the next items on SMART’s agenda is the construction of new stations to increase access to the train, starting with Petaluma North. The agency announced in October that it had allocated $14 million to build a second station in Petaluma at the intersection of Corona Road and North McDowell Boulevard, and construction is tentatively set to begin in summer 2023, with completion projected for fall 2024. Cumins reports that the current focus is on getting everything shovel ready. The funding includes $10 million from a grant that the California State Transportation Agency awarded to SMART earlier this year, and $2 million each from the City of Petaluma and the Sonoma County Transportation Authority, which expect their respective governing boards to vote to authorize the expenditures before the end of the year. SMART plans to approve a contract for the station’s design in January 2023, and “We’re excited to get started on that project,” says Cumins, who hopes it will be ready by the third quarter of 2024. He explains that construction and testing are major components that will determine the opening date, because everything must work properly and pass tests before service begins. Construction on the Windsor Station began in 2019, but construction was suspended when a lawsuit filed against ne of the funding sources reached the California Supreme Court. Extensions to Healdsburg and Cloverdale are still in the planning stages.
Branching out
In March 2022, SMART began offering freight service, after taking over ownership of the rail corridor that the Southern Pacific Railroad built in the 1800s, and Northwestern Pacific Railroad later used. As a separate entity, the freight division stands on its own and has the potential to turn a profit. Cumins explains that the line starts close to the Napa County line at Brazos Junction, goes through southern Sonoma County, across the Petaluma River into Marin County and then to the Ignacio Y (or, “wye,” a rail term meaning a triangular junction) in Novato, where it joins SMART’s main line and heads north to Petaluma, where freight customers are located.
Among the challenges is a significant change in the way many people work, now that they’ve discovered the advantages of conducting business remotely. “We have to watch and see what the new world looks like. Work from home is going to be a challenge for transit across the country,” says Cumins. He estimates that fewer than 20 percent of workers will return to the office five days a week and, as many businesses adopt new hybrid models that require employees to be onsite fewer days, he speculates that workers might take only three trips weekly. “That changes travel patterns from what they’ve been in the past,” he says. Thus, SMART must pay attention to changing trends, observe how changes to business life affect transit and be agile enough to adapt and make changes as they’re needed.
In addition, “We are reaching out to more diverse populations,” he says. Ensuring the train meets the needs of all members of the community is the goal and, to this end, SMART is exploring ways to better connect with members of the North Bay’s Latino community and let them know how the train can be a solution for their travel needs. Among SMART’s goals is increased community engagement, including efforts to provide all information in Spanish as well as English and participating in public events, where they can interact with members of the public and answer questions about the train.
Future funding is also an issue. In 2003, the California state legislature created the new rail district to plan for future passenger service and, in 2008, Measure Q asked voters in Marin and Sonoma counties to approve a quarter-cent sales tax to fund SMART for 20 years. The measure required a two-thirds majority and passed with 69.6 percent in favor of the train, and the subsequent bond sale raised $171.2 million in initial funding. The quarter-cent sales tax expires in 2029, however, and a measure to extend the sales tax until 2059 failed at ballot boxes in both counties in March 2020, garnering 53.6 percent of the vote, far shy of the two-thirds approval required to pass. Extension of the tracks northward, new stations, completion of the pathways and future operations are dependent on the funding the sales tax provides, and the SMART board has yet to announce when it plans to put a measure on the ballot to renew the quarter-cent sales tax.
Meanwhile, train travel has lots in its favor. It’s a stress-free way to travel and is environmentally responsible, and it gives passengers time to sit back and relax while someone else does the driving. “It’s more productive use of your time,” says Cumins, and the views are a bonus. “The scenery from Novato to Petaluma is one of the most beautiful places I’ve even seen in my life,” he says. “It’s a great way to travel.”
Ticket to Ride
The cost to travel via SMART is calculated via the distance a rider travels between the rail line’s five “zones.” It currently costs $1.50 to travel from one zone to the next, with seniors/youth/disabled at 75 cents per zone (These rates are 40 percent below typical rates, a discount being offered rough June of 2023.) Each zone currently contains between one and three stations. (Sonoma County Airport is the lone stop in the northernmost zone, though additional stations in Windsor, Healdsburg and Cloverdale are part of SMART’s long-term plans. The southern-most zone is in Larkspur.)
So, for instance, traveling by SMART from the downtown Santa Rosa station to downtown Petaluma, crosses two zones, working out to $6 roundtrip per rider. A shorter trip from the San Marin station in Novato to that city’s Hamilton station, would contain stops all within the same zone and would therefore be $3 round trip per rider. The maximum per day for all trips on SMART is $15. More information can be found at sonomamarintrain.org/fares.
SMART at a glance
- 45 miles of rail corridor connecting the Larkspur Ferry to Sonoma County Airport
- 24 miles of pathway providing a first/last-mile connection to the rail corridor
- 12 stations
- 6 park-n-ride lots
- 68 public crossings
- 27 bridges
- 2 tunnels
- Fleet of 18 Diesel Multiple Units (DMUs)
Source: SMART 2021-22 Approved Budget
