A decision by commute rail planners to delay running trains north of Santa Rosa is a source of frustration for northern Sonoma County residents, who have supported it from its inception.
"We paid the tax for it, give us the tax back," Cloverdale resident Nick Uribe said while strolling downtown. "It feels like to me that if they do only one section, it'll be all that gets done."
No one, however, has found the turn of events surprising.
"I'm shocked, but not surprised," said Sean Graham, owner of Patterson's Pub in Windsor, which sits across the street from the town's vacant train station. "It's unfortunate ... this is a bedroom community, a lot of people would take the train."
The Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit board on Saturday voted to build the line in stages, delaying service to the southern and northern ends for two to four years.
Under the downsized plan, it will initially build a commute rail line and adjacent pedestrian and bicycle path from Railroad Square in Santa Rosa to the Marin Civic Center in San Rafael, at a cost of $395 million. It would open in the fall of 2014.
The 40-mile segment is far short of the 70-mile line promised to voters of both counties, who approved a quarter-cent sales tax in November 2008 to build a rail line stretching from Larkspur to Cloverdale.
The cost of that entire line has grown to $695 million, an increase of 18 percent. The recession, meanwhile, has weakened consumer spending and created a shortfall in projected sales taxes, leaving a $350 million gap between revenues and construction costs.
The board on Saturday vowed to extend the rail line between 2016 and 2018 north to Cloverdale and south to Larkspur if bids came under estimates, which is expected, or the district can find additional state and federal funds.
"I am fairly confident we will be going farther north, at least to Santa Rosa north at Coddingtown," said Debora Fudge, SMART's chairwoman and a councilwoman for Windsor, which is being left out of the initial segment. "We need to evaluate the other cost-saving measures that staff brings back."
The 70-mile line is projected to carry 5,000 people a day. A line from Railroad Square to the Marin Civic Center would serve 57 percent of the system's projected ridership. Extending it and the pedestrian-bike path north to Coddingtown would capture more people - serving 69 percent of the system's projected riders - but cost $24 million more.
While the additional distance is only a couple of miles, SMART needs to buy a station site and right-of-way, put in double sets of tracks and possibly face wetland mitigation issues.
The SMART board on Wednesday is expected to order the rail cars from Sumitomo, the financial partner of Japanese car-builder Nippon Sharyo, at a cost of $54 million.
The delay is particularly galling for Cloverdale, which has a train station that has not served rail passengers since it was dedicated in 1999 and a downtown plan that is strongly oriented to passenger rail.
"The train would have helped. It would have brought in a lot of mixed use, restaurants and shops, give people an opportunity to open things up," said Mike Shanahan, a Cloverdale planning commissioner and small business owner.
Shanahan said that even a northern terminus in Windsor would be better.
"It would save Cloverdale people from having to commute all the way down to Santa Rosa ... it would be good," Shanahan said.
Elisa Stollmeyer, co-owner of the Windsor Bicycle Center, is disappointed, but still glad that at least something was being done.
"It'd be a good chance for people to commute and be more green," Stollmeyer said. "Coming to Santa Rosa is making a jump ... at least they are doing something."
Cloverdale resident Bob Baker, however, said he still thinks the SMART train is simply a fiasco.
"I don't think it will ever be a fast train, I don't think it will ever replace automobiles in the near future," Baker said. "There isn't the population to justify the train."
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