Had the automotive era begun a little earlier I don't believe the Eureka extension of the NWP would have been built. The fact that the NWP was never continued into Oregon is indicative that the boom was already over by the end of the First World War. The weaker routes of the NWP were already being abandoned in the twenties. The fifties freight heyday was temporary - remember the Rio Grande's narrow gauge to Durango also did well at that time and staved off the end for a decade.

SMART is giving half of the ROW to a bike lane, a really dumb move. The ROW is all that SMART has of any value - to encumber it like that is unwise.

The North Bay commute south has been in steady decline for many years. Why? San Francisco has been shucking jobs for decades: first the blue collar industrial jobs then the white collar. Newspapers and banks in particular have slashed their workforce. Then you have the live closer to work movement and of course the North Bay is remote from the major centers of Bay Area employment, which seems to be drifting south(ask why the 49'ers and Raiders want to move to Santa Clara). Third San Francisco has become as much a place to live as to work. When major office buildings are being converted to condos you know business activity is declining. So you have a reverse commute but most of it is going south to Silicon Valley.

And then there is the commute south to Marin, a major part of which consists of trucks of all sizes. Ain't no way they are going to take a train. Schools traffic is another important element in commute traffic congestion - again not amelioratable by SMART. The Marin County job picture has been bleak for years due to the high cost of housing. SMART is planning to serve a shrinking market.

Electric light rail would be more expensive than buses but not prohibitively so. It might take some years to build up the patronage but I think the public would recognize the investment was worth it in the long run.