At the Petaluma train depot, along the SMART rail line, former Petaluma city councilman and long-time Sonoma County Supervisor Jim Harberson was a strong proponent in the movement to bring passenger rail service to Sonoma County. Harberson was also the President of the Golden Gate Bridge District in the 1980's. (Kent Porter / Press Democrat) 2010

4 decades in the making, Sonoma-Marin commuter rail project is getting ready to roll, but financial obstacles — climbing costs and sagging tax revenue — still must be overcome

BOB NORBERG
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

The 5-inch-thick printout details every inch of the rail bed from Cloverdale to Hamilton Field, diagramming how tracks and ballast will be laid for passenger commute trains running at 79mph.

It is placed prominently atop a chest-high cabinet in the center of the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit District project office in Santa Rosa, headquarters for making a 70-mile commuter railroad a reality.

The document is emblematic of SMART's status, a $600 million commute railroad under construction following voter approval in November 2008 of a quarter-cent sales tax, capping a decade of planning and three decades of dreaming.

"There have been a lot of hurdles, but the most difficult one was getting the vote passed," said Lillian Hames, SMART's general manager.

Today, the district is shopping for rail cars that will be the face of commute system, buying land for some stations and a maintenance yard and moving ahead with $11.8million in consultant fees this year to complete the design and begin construction along the existing rail right-of-way.

After thousands of hours of meetings, political posturing, what-ifs, second-guessing and three sales tax elections, a working railroad is about to be created.

"It was so logical," said Jim Harberson, a longtime Sonoma County supervisor, president of the Golden Gate Bridge District board in the mid-1980s, and one-time councilman in Petaluma, where a station will be located. "You could not re-create the right-of-way if you went out today. It tied together the entire North Bay."

All that forward motion, however, is about to hit a critical financial junction within the next three months.

How much of that rail line can be delivered, and whether it runs the entire 70 miles by the 2014 date promised or opens in stages, remains very much in question.

The recession, which hit just when the vote passed, has taken a bite out of sales tax revenues and hinders the ability of SMART to sell bonds.

And as engineers look closer at the track, tunnels and bridges, SMART officials say there may be some unpleasant surprises.

"There are always construction issues, we are finding that now that we have the money to do the detailed estimates," Hames said. "You always find things."

SMART identified a $155 million funding gap several months ago and is looking for additional state and federal funds, but it still hopes to open the entire 70-mile line, with 14stations, from Larkspur to Cloverdale.

"It has been challenging in that we have a deficit we are still trying to narrow," said SMART Chairwoman Debora Fudge, a Windsor council member. "We are having to be more creative to make up the difference."

In September and October, the SMART board will begin dealing with those political and engineering realities.

"The big question being belabored is, is the system going to be up and running when we said it would, 2014, and will it be running from Larkspur to Cloverdale, and if there is this funding gap, how are we going to bridge it?" said Jake Mackenzie, a Rohnert Park councilman and SMART board member. "I don't think it gets us anywhere having these what-if discussions. All of us have made it clear, we will deal with it at that time."

Critic Mike Arnold of Novato believes the funding gap will be significantly greater.

"They will have to cut service somewhere and the mix of cuts are unknown," Arnold said. "There are very hard political decisions and hard economic decisions. How much can they construct and how much of the operating services can they subsidize?"

Worse than the recessionary loss of sales taxes is what Arnold believes is a fundamental shift in the sales tax pattern. With home prices depressed, homeowners are not taking out extra money when they refinance, which historically has been spent on consumer goods.

"There are higher saving rates, which means they are spending less, and if they are spending less, they are generating less sales tax," Arnold said. "It is not rocket science, it is a change in how households behave."

SMART was created by the state Legislature in 2004 to put a commute rail line on 70 miles of publicly owned right-of-way that historically had carried people and freight for more than a century.

The seeds for a modern commuter rail system in Sonoma and Marin counties were sown in the mid 1970s, when local, state and federal officials prevented the Northwestern Pacific Railroad line, a mover of freight, from being abandoned.

"A lot of the entities and a lot of political officeholders, citizens, hundreds and hundreds of people have worked on the concept of moving people on the corridor and moving them off the freeway," said Brian Sobel, who was a Petaluma councilman and Golden Gate Bridge director in the early 1990s. "There were a couple of times in the last 15 to 20 years that I never thought it would come to pass."

The first attempt to pass a tax was in 1990, when voters rejected a sales tax that would have built a commute line and also widened Highway 101.

SMART attempted to pass a quarter-cent sales tax measure in 2006, but it fell 1.5 percent short of the necessary two-thirds vote.

In November 2008, however, another attempt by SMART passed with a large-enough favorable vote in Sonoma County to offset the less than two-thirds approval in Marin.

Since then, staff and consultants have been hired and key decisions made, including the look of the train's passenger cars and preliminary design of the 14 stations.

Now much of the work has moved from procedural and political to practical, starting with the detailed analysis of construction of the line to re-evaluating station locations, primarily a new site near Coddingtown.

The initial projection was that construction would cost $600 million.

"My guess is it will rise, the costs will be higher," Hames said.

Engineers taking a closer look at the Porto Suello tunnel in San Rafael found that while it was repaired after a deadly 1996 fire, it was not completely rebuilt.

The railroad bridge over the Petaluma River may have to be replaced, but the U.S. Coast Guard wants one that is bigger and broader to accommodate larger barges, Hames said.

Hames said divers also will be looking at the piers of the railroad bridge over the Russian River in Healdsburg to see if there has been any scouring.

SMART has identified the location and done preliminary designs for the 14 stations that will be located from Cloverdale to Larkspur.

Some are next to historical structures, such as Railroad Square, the Healdsburg depot and the Petaluma depot, and next to newer stations built at Cloverdale and Windsor.

The others will be new transit locations that include north Santa Rosa near Coddingtown, Rohnert Park, Cotati, two in Novato, Marin Civic Center, San Rafael and Larkspur.

SMART still has to purchase land for the stations in Cotati, at Corona Road in Petaluma and for the site near Coddingtown, and also buy land and build a maintenance station on Todd Road in Santa Rosa.

The stations themselves will be platforms alongside the tracks, with roofs, ticket machines and bicycle storage, and some with parking.

SMART only owns the Petaluma and Healdsburg stations, but doesn't initially plan on using any station buildings.

"People think of stations as these large edifices with buildings where people will wait inside and buy tickets," said SMART spokesman Chris Coursey. "These will have benches and lights where people will wait for minutes and not hours."

SMART is projecting ridership of 5,300 daily, 2,000 Saturdays and 1,200 Sundays at startup.

The design of the rail cars, expected to cost as much as $90million for 18 cars, has largely been set.

SMART directors have chosen modern-looking cars with a sloped nose and interior amenities such as overhead racks, Wi-Fi, a bathroom and snack bar, with room for bicycle storage.

Monday is the deadline for manufacturers to submit proposals for the self-propelled rail cars that will run in sets of two.

However, the issue is clouded by Federal Railroad Administration regulations for crash-worthiness, the strictest emission standards yet and "buy America" requirements that specify how much of the manufacture and assembly is done in the United States.

Federal regulators had initially indicated that only the heavier American-style cars would be allowed on the tracks at the same time as the North Coast Railroad Authority runs freight trains.

The federal agency has since said it may grant waivers for the lighter-weight European style cars that have crash-management technology.

Either of those cars will have to be designed and built specifically for SMART. But other U.S. transit agencies are already requesting options to purchase similar cars, which could reduce development costs.

SMART will negotiate with the manufacturer for an initial order of 18 cars. The cars are to be delivered in 2013 for testing.

Still, the most difficult part is to come, with the SMART board by the end of this year developing a construction strategy.

The Marin County grand jury recommended that SMART delay building a bicycle-pedestrian path alongside the rail line, which is projected to cost $91 million.

Bicycle advocates, however, contend that Measure Q passed largely because of the pathway, and other supporters say it provides access to stations that will help drive ridership.

Cloverdale, a strong supporter of SMART, and Larkspur, which has a connection to the Golden Gate Bridge District ferries, have both stated their cases to be included in Phase One, if the line is built and opened in phases.

SMART officials contend that it is premature to talk about anything until the figures are in.

"The board has ordered us to keep the project moving forward and aim at 2014 to get trains running," said SMART spokesman Coursey. "Even if we come up short of money, we can do that. It may not be the 70-mile project, but it will be significant and valuable."

You can reach Staff Writer Bob Norberg at 521-5206 or bob.norberg@pressdemocrat.com.

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