When I left Sonoma County in 1988, 101 was a parking lot in both directions, and the morning and evening peak periods were at least 3 hour long. The express bus took 2 hours into SF in the morning (from Santa Rosa), and 2 1/2-3 hours in the evening - longest on Fridays. So much for no BART ... the real problem is that there are no alternatives to using 101 for local traffic in many places, which is a failure of transportation planning and implementation by the local agencies, which have long taken a "if we don't build it they won't drive" attitude. Also, of course, it's now too expensive to do anything significant, and these days if you add traffic capacity you can't meet GHG reduction and other environmental impact requirements. So Marin & Sonoma have to live in the stew of their own making.

SMART will offer an alternative, which is good. BART, however, would have been the capacity equivalent of another bridge and freeway, which is a different order of magnitude in terms of land use effects from a local line like SMART.