As a retired former environmental professional who sat on some project review panels, I agree for the most part regarding cost-effectiveness of bicycle facilities. One of our criteria when evaluating for funding was: what's your projection for non-recreational users? A way we found to look at that was: will people use the path as part of bike trips with a work or shoping/institutional endpoint (and how did you get that number?), or will they drive to a parking area to use the path, returning to the car at the end of the trip with no significant other stops. IOW, is the trip going somewhere for a purpose a car could have served, or is it just a trip for fun. The latter are not vehicle trip reducers; unfortunately, most of the paths that were proposed fit into that category.

Of course, with SMART, the Proposition language quoted above makes it clear that there will be a bike path connecting the SMART stations. So normal cost-effectiveness and trip reduction evaluations don't apply. The only real questions are: where to put it, what will it look like, and when will it be built? It doesn't have to be (by the quoted language anyway) right next to the tracks, but it does have to connect the stations. You (Bob) probably wouldn't qualify for the contract because 1) you're not one of the local pet consultants, and 2) you would look at alternatives that aren't right next to the tracks; and besides, it looks like they had already chosen somebody (no-bid contract?) before the announcement.