SMART released a wish list of $2.6 billion worth of projects it hopes to accomplish in the next decade, ranging from expanding rail service to the East Bay to completing its bike and pedestrian pathway.
The Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit district’s project plan acts more as a visionary document of how the three-year-old rail service would expand and enhance its existing $650 million 45-mile rail system, security, equipment and pathways in the coming 10 years.
Actually funding these projects would require significant investment from federal and state agencies as SMART could only finance a small fraction of these projects on its own, staff said.
“I love seeing things built and built immediately,” SMART board chairman and Sonoma County Supervisor David Rabbitt said during Wednesday’s board discussion. “At the same time, no project gets built these days without cobbling together funds from many, many different sources and it does take time to do that.”
Among the big-ticket items on SMART’s wish list are a $1.3 billion east-west rail expansion from Novato to Suisun City along Highway 37 that would connect to the national Capitol Corridor system; $820 million to add a second track along 12 sections of the rail corridor to allow for greater train frequency; $338 million to complete its northern rail expansion from Windsor to Cloverdale and add a North Petaluma station; and $108.8 million to complete SMART’s bicycle and pedestrian pathway between San Rafael and Cloverdale.
But SMART must reconcile this wish list with its existing financial situation, which took significant hits this past year from voters’ rejection of a sales tax extension to the coronavirus pandemic causing transit ridership to plummet. SMART Chief Financial Officer Heather McKillop estimated the agency would have up to $26.4 million to invest in these projects through 2029, which is when SMART’s quarter-cent sales tax is set to expire.
Of this funding, staff and the SMART board are proposing to set aside $5 million to use toward fulfilling rider-requested priorities of increasing train service frequency and reducing fares. That would leave $21.4 million, which McKillop said could be used to leverage as much as $48 million in federal and state grants — just under 2% of the $2.6 billion in projects for the next decade.
Given these limited dollars, SMART General Manager Farhad Mansourian said he and his staff will be asking the board on April 21 to prioritize a limited set of projects.
“Whichever list you pick, we then recommend you start designing and getting environmental clearance for those projects so we can get ready as we apply for grants,” Mansourian told the board.
SMART’s project plan does not factor in several unknowns that could change just how many and how quickly its wish list of projects gets funded.
The plan assumes SMART’s sales tax, which is its highest revenue generator, will expire in 2029. The agency will have four election years before then to attempt to convince Marin and Sonoma voters to extend the tax. If a tax renewal is ultimately approved, it would give SMART more funds that it could use to apply for even more federal and state dollars, McKillop said.
SMART’s last effort through Measure I, which would have extended the tax by another 30 years to 2059, failed to obtain the two-thirds majority support from voters in March 2020. The tax measure lost support from cycling groups such as the Marin and Sonoma County bicycle coalitions, whose members said SMART has not provided enough funding toward completing the pedestrian pathway.
“If we’re going to ever get the tax measure passed, people are going to need to see physical progress which means additional path they can ride on, right?” Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition executive director Eris Weaver told the board.
Warren Wells, Marin County Bicycle Coalition policy and planning director, called on SMART to allocate $4 million in the next five years toward the pathway and also to complete at least one pathway segment in Marin County each year over the next five years.
Patrick Seidler of the Transportation Alternatives for Marin organization urged SMART to perform all the preliminary design and environmental work for 11 sections of the pathway.
“Do those things next, like next year, because then it brings all of those segments into shovel-ready status,” Seidler said.
However, a new federal lawsuit filed last month could make future pathway buildouts more difficult and expensive. Several Sonoma County residents allege in the litigation that SMART illegally constructed the pathway on its rail right of way near their homes.
While Rabbitt asked staff how a court decision could affect its pathway buildout costs, Mansourian motioned to SMART’s general counsel Tom Lyons and said, “The attorney sitting here is moving around in his chair.”
Another unknown is President Joe Biden’s proposed $2.2 trillion jobs and infrastructure plan known as the American Jobs Plan, announced in late March. The plan calls for significant investment in infrastructure including transit, though it is unclear how much funding would trickle down to SMART or whether the plan will even receive enough support in Congress to pass.
However, rail extension projects to less populated areas north of Windsor, such as Healdsburg and Cloverdale, may not be eligible for some of these federal grants. That’s because certain grants require projects to be included as part of a regional transportation plan, according to Mansourian. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which administers funding for the nine-county Bay Area, has not included any SMART rail projects north of Windsor in its current regional transportation plan.
It’s unclear whether the American Jobs Plan would include the same requirements, but Mansourian is advocating for a “level playing field.”
“We strongly feel that MTC should not prevent us from even participating in this once-in-a-generation opportunity,” Mansourian said in a statement on Friday. “The residents of Marin and Sonoma have taxed themselves so they can have a world-class transit service to combat global warming and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
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