Years down the road, towards the end of Barack's second term, when SMART finally turns a wheel today's shock and awe will be replaced by the grim reality of fiasco. What the public will get will be a few half-empty doodlebugs dodging gate-crashers at every grade crossing. The highway interests will be gleefully pointing "I-told-you-so" fingers and demanding more freeways.

Of course Marin will have by then already added more phoney HOV lanes to 101, courtesy of its DC connections and built by the same local company that gets all the contracts. In the midst of the ensuing bus-rail operating subsidy wars the Golden Gate Bridge District will slyly try to dump its bus operations and get back to its core interests: collecting lucrative tolls and trying to build a second deck for automobiles on the bridge.

Eventually there will be an attempt to establish a transit district to replace GGT but it will fail at the polls. Back to square one.