How is it that SMART came up with the plan to deed over half of its ROW to a bike lane? Next to tearing up the ROW and selling it off -NCRA-NWP would be an obstacle there - using the bike lane scheme to permanently eliminate double tracking means the ROW is useless for mass transit. And since mass transit is the only viable alternative to building more freeways guess who benefits here?

But if the highway lobby is behind SMART who is underwriting the Novato lawsuit crowd, who are clearly anti-transit and pro-highway? That is when the light came on. From the transit point of view SMART is a lose-lose conundrum, no matter how the vote goes. But from the point of view of the highway lobby it is a win-win; therefore they are supporting both sides, hoping both the pros and antis will exhaust each other and poison the future for getting any mass transit plan approved.

Of course the road interests are exploiting the anti-development environmentalists who naively think that light rail will be as sprawl inducing as BART. Not so, but adding on infinitely more freeway lanes, which the public will accept in the face of gridlock, will cause exactly the kind of growth that the environmentalist so fear.

You have to hand it to the highway lobby. They are some kind of Rovian geniuses. Divide and conquer. That's why transit continues to flounder and the automobile still rules America with an iron hand.