Letter to the editor:

Sonoma-Marin Rail - pro and con

Editor:

For over fifteen years, the strongest advocates for the resumption of passenger rail service in Sonoma and Marin have been environmentalists. Rail is the environmentally superior method of providing longer distance transit in the two counties. Rail travel is unaffected by congestion on the highway, and so it is a fast, comfortable alternative to the stress of driving. Train travel time can be used to relax, work, or even nap. Because the railbed is already in public ownership, rail service can be running in three years.

Although some say buses would be cheaper, they ignore the cost to widen the highway between Novato and Petaluma so that buses can get past the congestion there. That job is likely to take more than a decade, making buses slower than trains for a long time to come. Besides, Sierra Club opposes the widening of highways.

With Golden Gate Transit losing riders every year, there is no reason to believe that more buses will attract significantly more riders. Studies indicate that potential riders have a strong preference for trains, and dislike riding buses.

Sonoma County is expected to grow by 130,000 people in the next 20 years. Without rail, these new residents and their cars will cause profound congestion for both Sonoma and Marin. Marin's support of rail will allow Sonoma County to adopt growth patterns less dependent on the automobile.

The North Bay cannot continue to grow as it has in the past. Suburban sprawl and dependence on the automobile for mobility have created ever-increasing traffic congestion and the loss of open space and habitat lands. We are facing the possibility of runaway global warming and large increases in gasoline prices due to shrinking global oil production (Peak Oil).

To head off the catastrophic impacts, we must reduce our dependence on the automobile. Sierra Club National Policy states "The greenhouse effect must be considered as a critical factor in planning and decision making regarding energy policy, land-use choices, and transportation alternatives, and as an integral part of the environmental assessment process."

As much as possible, future growth should be contained in walkable neighborhoods surrounding train stations, complete with homes, shops, offices and recreation (i.e., transit-oriented development, or TOD). Residents of such neighborhoods typically drive much less, because they can access many of their daily needs on foot, by bicycle or by convenient transit. Sierra Club National Transportation Committee Guidelines state that "Rail systems are most effective in stimulating compact development patterns, increasing public transit patronage and reducing motor vehicle use."

Passenger rail service in Marin and Sonoma counties will be a critical stimulus for lifestyle change. Without such a major new initiative, the sheer momentum of the sprawl machine will continue to dominate.

Environmentalists have succeeded in protecting much of the North Bay in its natural state. Now our challenge is to reduce automobile dependence, consistent with the policies mentioned above. That's why we support a public investment in passenger rail service as our generation's contribution towards a more sustainable future.

The authors are long-time environmentalists and transit advocates.

[signed] David Schonbrunn, Mill Valley and Bill Kortum, Petaluma

Editor:

The proposal to raise sales taxes a quarter cent in Marin and Sonoma counties to fund a single track commuter rail project promoted by the Sonoma-Marin-Area-Rail-Transit (SMART) district challenges many of our shared environmental values. While club policy clearly favors rail, this proposal is one that points out that club policy should not favor rail in all cases.

The proposal has four significant flaws that make it a questionable investment and should make club members ponder the complexity of public transit policy. First, the proposed rail has an enormous cost and will carry few riders. According to SMART's own studies - it released its DEIR in November 2005 - rail will cost over 1.2 billion dollars over 20 years in capital and operating expenses. And for this sum, the train is projected to take only 191 Sonoma County residents into Marin County on seven trains operating during the peak morning hours. By comparison, there are over 18,000 Sonoma residents working in Marin County.

Second, the two counties are already well-served by Golden Gate Transit buses and ferries, which are subsidized by Golden Gate Bridge tolls, and carry over 30,000 riders per day. This is one of the most successful bus transit systems in the country, when measured by the share of workers commuting to jobs in San Francisco. The SMART train will operate in the same corridor, taking passengers and revenues from this district which has been plagued, as many transit districts have, by budget shortfalls. This is not a good thing for the environment, because cuts in bus services can induce commuters back into their cars. The net effect of the investment in rail in the corridor could lead to miniscule increases in net transit ridership, if any.

Third, the economics of expanding a pre-existing bus service vs. starting rail from scratch are persuasive. Simply put, for the cost of rail, Golden Gate Transit bus services could approximately double. A simple back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that for the price of the rail project, the two counties could have 25 new bus routes of 2 hours each, with buses operating 10 hours a day and 15 minute headways. That's a lot of buses. With a base already of 30,000 riders per day, it's not hard to see that expanding bus services in the corridor could easily carry more riders than rail.

Finally, there are significant environmental consequences from running rail through quiet neighborhoods and wetlands. It's one thing to buy a property next to an operating rail line. It's quite another to impose rail and its noises on sleeping residents at the early hours of the morning. The rail line also operates through the prized and preserved wetlands of northern Marin, some recently saved by the Marin Audubon Society.

Why incur the environmental costs associated with rail, when it's not necessary? Express buses run on pre-existing infrastructure and have been shown to take people out of their cars. The arguments in Marin and Sonoma are not about cars vs. transit. They are about buses vs. rail, the economics of alternative public transit investments, and environmental impacts that only occur if the rail project gets the go-ahead from the voters in November.

[signed] Mike Arnold, co-chair, Marin Citizens for Effective Transportation

Editor's note.

The figure of 191 passengers in paragraph two above is widely considered to be a miscalculation. To learn more about this issue, come to the Marin Group's Sonoma-Marin Rail panel on Thu., May 18. For details or for more information, contact Louis Nuyens at 415 488 1734 or email lou -at- primavoce.org