The Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit District on Thursday revealed that the initial 37-mile route will be extended 1.5 miles north to a station on Guerneville Road in northwest Santa Rosa, an addition officials said will boost ridership significantly.
"The Guerneville station offers the highest amount of ridership, so it was important that we made it there," said Shirlee Zane, a member of the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors and the SMART board.
A station also will be added in Novato.
District officials said they will seek board approval for a $103.3 million construction contract to build the first phase of the rail project. If that happens on Monday as planned, construction could begin immediately.
Officials said the project will move forward despite ongoing efforts by rail opponents to repeal the quarter-percent sales tax that funds SMART.
"Prepare to see shovels," Zane said.
Officials said they received a proposed bid that was $4 million below expectations and then were able to negotiate that down an additional $2 million and include at no extra cost the Guerneville Road station, $8.5 million, and Novato Creek Bridge replacement, $2 million. The cited the leverage they had in in dealing with firms during a weak economy.
"There are companies that really need the work, so they are willing to sharpen their pencils," Zane said.
District officials on Monday will ask the SMART board to approve a contract with Alameda-based Stacey and Witbeck Inc. and Missouri-based railroad specialist Herzog Contracting Corp. to perform the track reconstruction, bridge repair and station infrastructure from Railroad Square in Santa Rosa to the Marin Civic Center in San Rafael.
The companies have extensive commuter railroad experience and have worked on projects together in the past. SMART officials said the project will create 900 jobs but they declined to say how many of those workers will be local, saying the contractors will announce those figures on Monday.
The Stacey and Witbeck firm has been involved in commute rail projects in San Francisco, San Jose and other parts of the Bay Area. Herzog has worked on Caltrain in San Mateo and on projects in San Diego, Los Angeles and Sacramento.
SMART also will be able to add a station in Atherton in Novato, which had been deferred, and later this spring seek bids on work from the Marin Civic Center to downtown San Rafael.
Farhad Mansourian, SMART's General Manager, said Thursday that opponents of the rail project will need 39,000 signatures to qualify their measure for the ballot.
But RepealSMART contends that just 15,000 signatures are necessary, citing the threshold set by Proposition 218, a measure passed by voters in 1996 that requires two-thirds voter approval on most tax measures and sets up an initiative process to repeal taxes.
Two other state election laws, however, have formulas that would set the thresholds at 30,000 or 39,000 signatures.
"He is making a legal decision on the number of signatures that is not his call," said Clay Mitchell of Windsor, RepealSMART co-chairman. "We have been clear from the beginning that constitutional law trumps statute and the constitution of California lowers the threshold."
Mitchell said his group expects to easily exceed the lowest threshold, 15,000, but not the higher ones.
Opponents have until Jan. 27 to submit petitions to the registrars of voters in Sonoma and Marin counties for verification before they are delivered to SMART.
SMART's board then would decide whether to accept the signatures and call for an election, which most likely would be in November. A simple majority yes vote would be necessary to overturn the tax, passed by voters with 70 percent support in 2008.
Mansourian said the project initially will be financed with state, local and federal funds, and not from $191 million in construction bonds that the district sold on Dec. 20.
He said the money raised from that sale, $171 million, was put in an escrow account pending the outcome of the repeal effort, which he predicted would fail.
"We're not here to stop. We're here to go forward," he said.
Zane said the addition of a Guerneville Road station will boost ridership above 80 percent of expected ridership for a full system, which calls for a 70 mile-route from Cloverdale to Larkspur.
The agency estimates on its web site that 5,300 people would use the train on a daily basis.
SMART Director Debora Fudge, who is mayor of Windsor, said those figures are three years old and district officials expect that the ridership will be higher.
"We think they are conservative," Fudge said. "When other commute rail lines started up, like DART in Texas, they had ridership twice what was expected."
The Guerneville Road station will be near Coddingtown Mall and high-density housing, and SMART also is negotiating with regional bus service providers to connect passengers who live in Windsor and Cloverdale to the rail line.
Service is expected to begin in late 2015 or early 2016.
UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy: