Largesse - the willingness to lavishly subsidize is the unknown here. The ferries have achieved pet status but will that extend to SMART remains to be seen.

The dollar figure of subsidy per passenger trip should start some rethinking about 2 man operation along with the departure of Mansourian. The consultants-contractors have collected their checks and gone elsewhere.

The most hoped for developments would be GGT's taking it over fairly quickly and the abandonment of the NWP. Without getting rid of heavy FRA-AAR rules and being able to build transit gradient ramps there won't be any grade separation and repurposing to rapid transit.

But MTC-ABAG-BART and the Party patronage machine do not really want this thing to be any more than peripheral, irrelevant; it's a placeholder for broad gauge.