SMART’s latest grant of $32 million gets passenger rail line closer to Healdsburg

Sometimes, to explain how Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit will keep pushing north, Eddy Cumins refers to “puzzle pieces” that must fall into place.

Cumins, who took over as SMART’s general manager late in 2021, announced Monday that the agency had just secured another giant piece of that jigsaw — this one in the form of a $31.89 million federal grant.

SMART was one of six California agencies to receive funds from the Department of Transportation’s Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements Grant Program. Much of that money was made available by the August 2021 passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, President Joe Biden’s landmark climate and public works bill.

Some $28 million of that money will defray the cost of extending the SMART rail line 5 miles from Windsor to Healdsburg. The total cost of that section, the agency estimates, will be $160.5 million.

With this latest grant, said Cumins, SMART has now financed 65% of the Windsor-to-Healdsburg section — along with that segment of the bike and pedestrian path that will parallel the train tracks.

SMART also runs its own in-house freight rail operation, and will use the $4 million balance of the just-announced grant to replace older locomotives with newer models that emit far less particulate matter and other smog-producing ingredients.

The agency finds itself on an impressive roll, as it were.

“I’ll tell you something, this agency’s hitting on all cylinders right now,” said Cumins. Since January 2022, he noted, SMART has brought in $221.6 million in state and federal grants.

By leveraging the quarter-cent sales tax passed by voters in 2008 as a local match, SMART has “essentially tripled” the community’s investment in the rail line since the end of 2021, he said.

Cumins also pointed to a recent study showing that SMART ridership in July was up 105% over ridership in July 2019 — the highest ridership recovery ratio among 24 Bay Area transit agencies.

In July, SMART was awarded $30 million as part of a state program aimed at reducing traffic congestion and improving climate resilience. That windfall helped fully fund the agency’s 3-mile extension from its Santa Rosa North station to Windsor.

Construction on that section began in 2020 but was stalled by pandemic-era restrictions and a $35 million shortfall resulting from legal battles.

Work on that stretch of track, already 30% completed, will resume shortly.

“Shovels are going in the ground this fall, and we’re expecting to carry the first passengers out of Windsor in 2025,” said Julia Gonzalez, communications and marketing manager for SMART.

SMART officials do not have a date for when construction would begin on the extension from Windsor to Healdsburg. Giving an estimate at this time would be “irresponsible,” said Gonzalez, considering the agency is still short at least 35% of the funding needed to complete the extension.

Healdsburg will hold an evening meeting Oct. 19 when residents will be invited to weigh in on where to put the SMART station — even though it won’t be in use for at least several years.

“That decision is going to happen soon,” said Healdsburg Mayor Ariel Kelley, “because they’re going to start designing it soon, because the money is there.”

The recent tsunami of grant money for SMART’s Windsor and Healdsburg extensions feels a bit surreal to some residents.

“Last December,” said Kelley, “if you would’ve asked when is the train coming to Healdsburg, I would’ve said, ‘Sometime in my children’s lifetime.’”

The $32 million grant announced Monday, the latest in a string of fiscal wins for SMART, “couldn’t have come at a better time,” and is providing “the momentum that’s going to bring this thing to the finish line.”

“They’re knocking ’em down like bowling pins,” said SMART board vice chair Melanie Bagby of the agency’s recent advances, and its progress toward Cloverdale, eventually set to serve as terminus of the 70-mile rail line. The line currently runs about 45 miles from northern Santa Rosa to Larkspur.

About 40% of the accompanying bike and pedestrian path is complete and work is underway or about to begin on an additional 13%, together totaling 37.6 miles, Gonzalez said.

One critical piece of the remaining puzzle, Bagby and others point out, was securing the funds to construct the rail and accompanying pathway segment from Front Street to Bailhache Avenue in Healdsburg, including replacement of the bridge spanning the Russian River.

Funding for the span, which dates to about 1921, came through a $13.6 million earmark Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, secured in 2021 in the $547 billion House transportation bill.

“We haven’t really talked about it as a community,” she said, on account of being “hyperfocused” on the rail line, “but this funding for the bridge is really key.”

That bridge, along with the pathway down to Bailhache Avenue, “will connect the downtown with the community to the south” Bagby said.

“It’s really tying the community together.”

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at 707-521-5214 or austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com or on Twitter @ausmurph88.