The local Petaluma paper published an unscientific poll on SMART today and the results were surprisingly negative, about 70% against. Most comments homed in on the fact that a real transit system is needed, not a commute operation. Unfortunately a number of respondents came up with that same old pining for BART nonsense. They don't realize that BART is as expensive as high speed rail for about one third the speed.

What is troubling about this sad sequence of SMART schemes going down to defeat is that it is poisoning the future for a any local rail transit system. It might be possible to sell a starter light rail system in Sonoma County, using the argument that it is a standard technology that could be extended towards San Francisco. Marin is hopeless - all they really want to do is build phony hov lanes wherein the hov feature doesn't cut in until an hour after the rush hour has started.

The sooner that NCRA-NWP freight service gets up and running the better, so that it can be proven once and for all whether it is viable or not.