Austin Murphy and Emma Murphy, PRESS DEMOCRAT
Was this the SMART train, or the Lexington Avenue local during a New York City rush hour?
It took several minutes on the morning of April 18 for passengers on the platform at the Santa Rosa Downtown station to pack themselves onto a southbound train. With the Butter & Egg Days festival happening in Petaluma, four stops south, this was an especially crowded day on SMART, with over 7,200 riders — about 2,500 more than its daily average.
“There’s nowhere to park near the parade,” a mom explained to her two young children, once they were all aboard. “So we’re taking the train!”
On one side of the tracks, as SMART trip No. 9 eased into the Petaluma North station 20 minutes later, was the paved pathway for cyclists and pedestrians, part of a trail network that one day is meant to stretch 70 miles when completed, from Larkspur to Cloverdale. On the other were seven half-finished apartment buildings on land sold by SMART that will eventually hold 131 affordable housing units.
The bustling tableau — packed trains within walking distance of low-cost housing, connecting communities with less reliance on automobiles — was precisely what the founders of the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit district envisioned in their successful campaign almost 20 years ago to return passenger train service to the North Bay after a decades-long hiatus.
Read more at https://www.pressdemocrat.com/2026/05/09/smart-tax-measure-2026-election-sonoma-marin/