Friends, Romans and Countryman, lest we forget that NCRA, established in 1990, a full 12 years before SMART and with the freight, commute and passenger trains part of its matrix from the beginning. I attended every meeting prior to the formation of SMART in Marin and all of the meetings in the first two years while they wrestled with the idea of co-existing with the NCRA-NWP.
Freight was still running on the NWP and the SMART folks didn't even know it! The Public Officials
of Marin and Sonoma County had no clue about railroads, infrastructure, operations or equipment.
Myself, the late Don Edmisten of the PUC, Lionel Gambil of Novato and others spent hours at those meetings trying to educate them about railroads and a commute operation. We suggested they ride CALTRAINS on the Peninsula to get an idea how things operate, what the equipment looked like and what the infrastructure was like. They were so naive it wasn't even funny. When they finally figured out that they would have to share the tracks with freight, they were incredulous! So none of this is new, it goes back to the very beginning. It has nothing to do with cooked numbers or their EIR but everything to do with the fact they thought they could steamroll the NCRA and NWP first. Instead of coming up with plan that included freight from the very beginning in the early planning stages, they ignored the NCRA and NWP. This is not my OPINION this is fact because I have been involved in the process from the very beginning.