SMART back off possible Santa Rosa delay

<p>North Bay rail planners on Wednesday backed off a proposal that could have left Santa Rosa out of the initial start of train service in 2014.</p><p>But there are still no answers to how the rail line will be funded and when it will be completed.</p><p>The plan scrapped Wednesday had relied on being able to get $155 million in federal money to complete as much as possible of the Sonoma County line after first building through Marin County. But that funding now looks extremely doubtful.</p><p>Without the money, SMART will now reconsider what segment of the Larkspur to Cloverdale rail corridor to build first.</p><p>Whatever decision is made, said Charles McGlashan, a Marin County supervisor and SMART director, SMART should not short-change Sonoma County, where support has been the strongest.</p><p>“I think we need to immediately get the word out that we are willing to explore all options ... nothing is off the table,” McGlashan said.</p><p>It was a softening of the strategy adopted by SMART directors on Jan. 20, which called for SMART to start service in Larkspur in 2014, running as far north as money would allow.</p><p>Depending on detailed cost and engineering studies that are now being done, that could have meant the terminus could be Petaluma or Rohnert Park, but perhaps not running all the way to Santa Rosa, the corridor's biggest city with the largest potential ridership.</p><p>Meanwhile, the strategy called for applying for federal New Start funds to build the second phase of service in Sonoma County, opening in 2016.</p><p>General Manager Lillian Hames stressed in remarks to the SMART executive committee Wednesday the strategy was meant to be an option, not a final plan.</p><p>Still, it had been met by angst by SMART directors from both counties when it quickly became apparent the federal funding was not going to happen.</p><p>“I want to avoid a north-south controversy, where the north feels like it is getting ripped off by the south,” McGlashan said.</p><p>The problem is SMART is $155 million short of what it needs to build the entire 70-mile rail line and open it by 2014. Officials blame the recession, which has depressed sales tax revenue and the ability to sell construction bonds.</p><p>To apply for the federal New Start funds, SMART needed the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the regional transportation planner for the nine-county Bay Area, to put the SMART project on its priority list.</p><p>MTC said it would not give SMART that priority status. It already has applications for $1.5 billion for BART and San Francisco Muni projects that take precedent, MTC Chairman Scott Haggerty wrote in a letter to the SMART board.</p><p>Hames said that SMART and MTC will begin meeting next week to explore what other funding SMART could seek.</p><p>In the meantime, Hames said they will continue working to determine more precisely how much the line will cost, segment by segment, and what the funding gap will be.</p><p>That work should be done by this summer, letting SMART then begin to deal realistically with what the initial segment of line may be.</p><p>“We need to get the word out that all options are on the table,” said Chris Coursey, SMART's community outreach manager. “We don't have to make a decision right now, what that first segment looks like.”</p><p>Allen Tacy of Petaluma, a member of Friends of SMART, suggested SMART take some cost-cutting moves, such as using less costly 60-mph track in many places instead of 80 mph-track, not rebuilding some railroad bridges and setting aside a smaller reserve.</p><p>“We should do this before we talk about segmenting the system,” Tacy said.</p>