OPB makes some excellent points but misses the fact that the broken record is the one that is playing at SMART headquarters. SMART has limited relevance to Marin and that is SMART's doing. The way to engage Marin is to extend SMART to Marin City and beyond. But it can't be done with heavy rail.

The conflict here is transit mode vs. heavy rail mode. The issue will take years to play out in the real world. Eventually NCRA-NWP will wither away, but by then the public will be burned out on SMART.

For SMART to suggest that their pricey, highly-specialized, self-propelled dmu's with mechanical transmissions could be later converted to electric is boffo. Misty must be chuckling.