San Rafael and Novato could institute their Quiet Zone as soon as Thursday. The PUC has advised them to wait until after SMART starts service before taking this action.

Novato, the screwiest town around when it comes to trains, is also voting tonight on budgeting the remainder of the millions of dollars they are paying out of their own pocket to build a SMART station downtown. That station passed on a 3-2 vote and the city council member who led the charge has recused himself from other votes on the matter after a complaint was made against him as being conflicted, due to a property he bought near the station site a matter of months before starting his campaign to build the new station. The hilarious thing is that this member is now a representative on the SMART board, representing a regional agency and not Novato, but he can't even vote on Novato Downtown Station items due to a conflict which should have prevented the station from ever being built. Classic Novato.

Another Novato City Council member has a quote in the IJ where she seems to be equating safety as an equal or possibly lower priority than "quality of life" issues like enduring horns for two or three more months to safely get her city's citizens familiar with the new reality on the rails with SMART trains running during commute hours. Petaluma already made the decision that their quality of life was more important than safety, despite pleas from regulators and the railroad. So it's not like Novato is alone in this.

The only person with any real vision or understanding seems to be Gary Phillips of San Rafael. He seems to be pushing to delay quiet zone implementation until after service has been going for a time and people are used to the huge number of train trips that will be occuring.