Unfortunately the demise of NCRA/NWP comes too late to avoid the rigors of FRA-AAR heavy freight rules being imposed on SMART. And with that too bad they did not go to 136lb. rail instead of 115lb. That decision bespoke SMART's eventual dominance. I suggest 136lb. fares better with little or no maintenance and quite possibly SMART will have little money for maintenance for a while.

The best short-term development would be for GGT to assume control of SMART at the earliest. The emphasis could be changed to southern Marin expansion where the patronage is and get the City on board. With Caltrain electrification now secure and certain to be a great success vis-a-vis BART crap BART's total control of MTC might be undermined to the extent SF could get its collective mind off broad gauge on Geary and back to standard gauge light rail. Shame they did not add space for a rail ROW on the Doyle Drive project. A difficult sell as that had already proved a very expensive rebuild.

Geary would have to be the entree into downtown SF. BART would no doubt try to colonize the Northbay via 19th Avenue. I would argue for light rail via tunneling under Pacific Heights over to Geary.