The $600 million Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit line, envisioned as a fast-moving alternative to the traffic on Highway 101, is struggling with mounting costs and a dearth of sales tax revenue.
Rachel Swan
August 26, 2019
San Francisco Chronicle (TNS)
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Getting to work is an odyssey for Shaun Ralston.
It starts at 6:10 a.m., when he mounts a bike outside his granny flat in Santa Rosa and rides 2 miles to the SMART train station. He boards a train as the first pink sunlight washes over the clouds, rides down to San Rafael, and transfers to a bus that crosses the Golden Gate Bridge and glides into San Francisco’s Financial District around 8 a.m.
One trip, three modes, two transfers. But before the train started rolling two years ago, Ralston drove or rode a bus along the painfully sluggish lanes of Highway 101. He said the SMART train, which is now dogged by financial trouble, has changed his life.
“It’s just so much better than bumper-to-bumper traffic,” he said, sitting with his laptop on the train, as the green hills of Sonoma and Marin streaked by. He’s looking forward to the opening of a new station near the Larkspur ferry terminal in December, a hard-fought victory that will bring North Bay commuters one step closer to San Francisco.
The $600 million Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit line,