If this practice is so SMART, why can’t I discover it?
That’s the query I requested myself at Larkspur, in Marin County, after arriving on the ferry from San Francisco one current morning.
I used to be on my solution to Petaluma, and had been trying ahead to experiencing California’s latest and most spectacular ferry-to-train connection: the Golden Gate Ferry to the SMART practice, the sunshine rail line operating by Marin and Sonoma counties.
SMART, whereas little-known statewide, provides huge inspiration for Californians who need extra infrastructure that connects us. It’s additionally a window on the place California remains to be rising — on our metropolitan edges, outdoors locations like Fairfield, Riverside and Escondido.
SMART opened in 2017, providing 43 miles of service from Marin’s San Rafael as much as Sonoma’s Charles M. Schulz airport. It was constructed for peanuts — simply $400 million. An extension south from San Rafael to the Larkspur ferry opened simply earlier than the pandemic hit, crushing demand for trains and ferries.
However ridership is rebounding. And SMART is working to broaden. It’s including a second Petaluma station and making a micro-transit service to attach its airport station to the precise airport.
SMART has begun building on an extension north to Windsor, although it’s paused that work whereas awaiting a California Supreme Courtroom determination on the venture’s funding. Finally, SMART will take the practice farther — to Cloverdale, on Mendocino County’s doorstep, 80 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge.
And SMART has studied a brand new line east throughout the North Bay from its Novato-Hamilton station to the Interstate 80 hall at Suisun Metropolis. There, SMART would share a station with Amtrak’s Capitol Hall service, which connects the state capital and San Jose. A brand new east-west North Bay hyperlink can’t come quickly sufficient. The state says California State Route 37, the world’s hottest east-west thoroughfare, may very well be “completely submerged” by 2040 due to storms and rising sea ranges.
With all these initiatives, SMART is looking for to serve each guests to California, and Californians who could also be much less more likely to reside in the course of our greatest cities, however nonetheless wish to be linked to them. Certainly, transit initiatives like SMART and the ACE practice, which runs by the Altamont hall and is being prolonged south and east by Modesto to Merced, are serving to to knit Northern California into what some wonks name “The Mega-Area.” That conception imagines the “Bay Space” reaching so far as Lake Tahoe or Fresno.
After all, serving such a big space requires making sensible hyperlinks accessible to actual folks. At Larkspur, SMART has work to do.
The expertise was mortifying as a result of I had been bragging about SMART to my companion that day, a Swiss-Swedish journalist-colleague. After many years of touring the world by rail, he's a practice snob, and he started making little jokes as quickly as I turned left off the ferry, wandered to the sting of its car parking zone — and couldn’t discover the practice. Unable to find the platform utilizing the navigation app on my balky smartphone, I began shifting towards a tunnel utilized by bicyclists and pedestrians. Nonetheless no practice.
Finally we wandered to the appropriate aspect of the car parking zone, crossed busy Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, and meandered round a curve in a smaller road, by two workplace parking tons, and up a slender driveway to succeed in the practice station. On board, the journey was effective, although my European buddy pressed a conductor on why the practice runs on diesel, not electrical energy (the reply to the wisenheimer: to save cash in an America that doesn’t make investments a lot in trains).
The excellent news is that, if my colleague ever comes again to the North Bay, the issue ought to be solved. After making some calls, I discovered that SMART has repeatedly put up sandwich boards and posted indicators to point out the trail from ferry to coach and again — however these preserve getting stolen or blown away by winds. As I write this, they’re enacting a extra everlasting resolution: Vinyl decals will probably be utilized to the pavement to mark the most secure route.
These decals are referred to as breadcrumbs, and you may comply with them, slowly and thoroughly, to California’s future.
Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Sq..