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Re: SMART is maybe being "smarter", and that is just fine....?
Author: BOB2
Date: 08-23-2019 - 13:46
You elect the local Council and Board of Supervisor Members from the agencies that sit on this agencies Board. They make those decisions. They appear to have recognized that this service level problems is a serious issue (fast, "frequent", affordable, and reliable service, what a concept....????). And, now that they need to put the sales tax renewal up, yeah, it might have helped bring that home.
This project has had terrible and even contradictory political leadership, and have chosen to avoid, taking responsibility,tic and have set some low expectations. This is a project that was cobbled together politically in what was a difficult political environment (but one where the public has always showed significantly more support than their collective political leadership on the Board).
Now, with the sales tax renewal needed, I suspect some of the focus groups and polling they are that they've almost certainly done, has shown significant public support for SMART (Mouse excepted), and that folks like the trains, folks would like a lot more service, and those who use is do complain about lack of service....
And then, the "miracle" occurs in politics... Suddenly, I see all kinds of local Councilmembers who now claim that they have always supported SMART....yadda...yadda...yadda... Yeah it's BS, but they're now "on-board"...with SMART. The good news is that, as of now, it appears that SMART has developed some real political champions and ownership at the Board and Local level, including in parts of Marin...
As to SMART keeping promises, is not this a story about testing of the Larkspur extension, and did it not mention the new Novato Station (folks who now want the station, and are getting what they didn't want (evil trains!), before they realized they'd screwed up....????).
Given equipment and track capacity issues my question would be how do they intend to fill that gap? Obviously, more equipment and more DT segments, to improve service levels will likely be in the sales tax measure renewal, what resources or scheduling changes do they have to do this by the time these projects open? What is the scheduled service date to Larkspur?
This project has had terrible and even contradictory political leadership, and have chosen to avoid, taking responsibility,tic and have set some low expectations. This is a project that was cobbled together politically in what was a difficult political environment (but one where the public has always showed significantly more support than their collective political leadership on the Board).
Now, with the sales tax renewal needed, I suspect some of the focus groups and polling they are that they've almost certainly done, has shown significant public support for SMART (Mouse excepted), and that folks like the trains, folks would like a lot more service, and those who use is do complain about lack of service....
And then, the "miracle" occurs in politics... Suddenly, I see all kinds of local Councilmembers who now claim that they have always supported SMART....yadda...yadda...yadda... Yeah it's BS, but they're now "on-board"...with SMART. The good news is that, as of now, it appears that SMART has developed some real political champions and ownership at the Board and Local level, including in parts of Marin...
As to SMART keeping promises, is not this a story about testing of the Larkspur extension, and did it not mention the new Novato Station (folks who now want the station, and are getting what they didn't want (evil trains!), before they realized they'd screwed up....????).
Given equipment and track capacity issues my question would be how do they intend to fill that gap? Obviously, more equipment and more DT segments, to improve service levels will likely be in the sales tax measure renewal, what resources or scheduling changes do they have to do this by the time these projects open? What is the scheduled service date to Larkspur?
