The southern part of the line used to belong to Golden Gate Transit and sits in Marin County which has never wanted to do anything with it except use it for parking, as in Larkspur, or tear it up. The important part, from Petaluma to Santa Rosa, which would make an excellent streetcar line on its own merits, is owned by the feckless NCRA who couldn't even keep the line operating when it was legal.

Now they have lost their grandfather status and are being shaken down by the local bureaucracy. It is their own damn fault.

A major part of the NCRA "vision" is that there would be wine train type tourist operation at least north of Santa Rosa and implicitly all the way to Eureka. The hype has always been to restore the NWP to its former glory. Tourist operations would have to be real passenger trains with standard railway equipment and they would have to be able to travel to Larkspur to connect with the ferries. Looks to me like their "light rail" construction would not be able to accommodate regular passenger equipment. A big mistake as tourist traffic would constitute most of the business this scheme could hope to generate.

If SMART can't take title to the NWP trackage in Sonoma County the transit project is hopeless.