Why would anyone ask such a question? It seems obvious that the purpose of a commuter rail system is to carry passengers.

Yet the Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit District’s (SMART’s) application for $468 million in State of California funding to extend its rail line north from Windsor to Cloverdale says absolutely nothing about ridership. SMART’s 118-page application for funding from the California Transit and Intercity Rail Capital Program includes details about the proposed rail extension, as well as a new bike/pedestrian pathway along the rail alignment but says nothing about the degree to which its new rail extension would be used.

SMART commenced commuter rail service between Santa Rosa and San Rafael in August 2017. Its cumulative (capital plus operating) expenditures between that date and June of 2022 were over $1.11 billion. The most recently published data, for FY21-22, shows over $78 in operating expense for every one way passenger trip, with only $3.61 of that expense paid for by the passenger, leaving the other $74.39 per trip for the tax payer to pay.

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However there are some bright spots. SMART carried more riders in FY22-23 and, thanks to effective service finetuning, imaginative marketing, and introduction of a micro-transit, on-demand, flexible-routed shuttle to serve the Sonoma Airport community, SMART’s percent passenger recovery ranks among the highest in the Bay Area.

In 2023, SMART is averaging about 1,800 one way passengers per weekday at its maximum load segment through the congested Marin Sonoma Narrows. Highway 101 immediately adjacent carries over 164,000 persons in 146,000 passenger vehicles per day. So, SMART has a mode share of just over 1% of the highway share, coupled with extraordinarily high operating costs.

What mode share/ridership can one expect for the $468 million extension to Cloverdale? As indicated, SMART is silent on the question. Here’s an estimate: Healdsburg’s 2023 population is 11.200 and Cloverdale’s is 8,900. Highway 101 between Cloverdale and Healdsburg carries 22,000 to 41,000 vehicles per day: between Healdsburg and Windsor the daily highway volume ranges from 45,000 to 63,000. Neither segment is congested. If SMART captured say that same 1% of mode share, it would attract between 450 and 650 one-way passengers per weekday. Since SMART would be operating on an additional 22 miles of track the operating expense of this new very low passenger extension would undoubtedly be even higher than the $78 per one way per passenger noted above.

Because of its unfulfilled promises, low ridership, exorbitant operating cost per passenger, unusually high public subsidy, and low fare revenue, SMART faces a serious dilemma. But its most critical issue is that to remain in operation after March 2029 when the current sales tax expires, a sales tax extension measure requiring a 2/3 vote will need voter approval. In March of 2020 a similar extension measure failed badly. To gain the public confidence needed to get the public financial support needed before 2029, much remains to be done. Continuing the litany of exaggerations, unacknowledged operating problems and rosy ridership projections of the past won’t help.