trains – Enviro Updates

Tracks blocked from trail takeover

April 3, 2026

Austin Murphy, PRESS DEMOCRAT

A minor legal defeat suffered by the Great Redwood Trail Agency is being hailed as a major cause for celebration among some North Bay railroad enthusiasts.

A February ruling by Surface Transportation Board, an obscure but powerful federal agency tasked with regulating the nation’s freight rail network, has, in an indirect way, breathed new life into train buffs’ hopes for a return, someday, of rail service to communities along the Highway 101 corridor from Cloverdale to Willits.

The ruling is the upshot of a legal move that began two years ago when the public agency spearheading the planning and construction of most of the 320-mile Great Redwood Trail between San Francisco and Humboldt bays filed a petition with the Surface Transportation Board. The filing related to a different section of North Coast railroad — the Mendocino Railway line, popularly known as the Skunk Train, which runs 40 miles west to east, from Fort Bragg to Willits.

The petition sought the board’s authorization for what is called a third-party, “adverse” abandonment, part of a formal step that’s been used to convert mothballed segments of the nation’s vast network of commercial rail lines into trails over the past several decades.

Land Use, TransportationGreat Redwood Trail, railroad, Skunk Train, trains

SMART to break ground on extension to Healdsburg

March 22, 2026

Austin Murphy, PRESS DEMOCRAT

Boring can be interesting — especially when it signals that SMART has broken ground on its much-anticipated nine-mile track extension from Windsor to Healdsburg.

Field work for that project is set to begin Monday, March 30, the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit agency announced Friday.

For this early phase of the work, which is expected to continue through April, technicians will use a drill rig to extract soil samples along the rail line’s right-of-way.

“Watch for crews drilling soil samples,” the city of Healdsburg posted on social media, “so the train will be on firm footing.”

TransportationSMART, trains

Sonoma County BOS endorses SMART tax renewal measure

March 3, 2026

Emma Murphy, PRESS DEMOCRAT

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors has thrown its support behind a ballot measure seeking to renew a quarter-cent sales tax underwriting the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit system.

A board majority on Tuesday voted to place the measure on the June 2 ballot, consolidating it with the primary election and, in a second vote, authorized Chair Rebecca Hermosillo to submit a letter in support of the measure.

Four of Sonoma County’s five elected supervisors voted in favor of both motions. Supervisor David Rabbitt, who serves on SMART’s board of directors, was absent Tuesday. In a text Rabbitt said he was in Washington D.C. on behalf of a few local agencies including the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District.

SMART’s sales tax, which raises about $51 million annually, was passed by voters in 2008 and is set to expire in 2029. The new measure asks Sonoma and Marin voters to renew the tax for 30 years.

Transportationballot measure, public transit, SMART, trains

SMART supporters submit petition for tax renewal measure

November 25, 2025

Adrian Rodriquez, NORTH BAY BUSINESS JOURNAL

North Bay voters could decide within months whether to throw Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit a financial lifeline or let it fail.

The quarter-cent sales tax that collects more than $51 million annually, or about half of the agency’s revenue, is set to expire in 2029. Without an extension, the agency would be forced to cease operations.

On Friday, a coalition of SMART supporters filed an initiative seeking to extend the tax for 30 years. The petition aims to put a measure on the June 2 ballot.

The petition was submitted three months ahead of the deadline. To be successful it needs signatures of at least 10% of registered voters between the two counties, or 48,809. The petitioners submitted 71,851 signatures.

Transportationsales tax, SMART, trains

Op-Ed: Highway 37 traffic jam fuels fight over endangered mice, marsh birds

May 7, 2025

Ryan Sabalow, CALMATTERS

A bill by Assemblymember Lori Wilson could help finally break the Highway 37 gridlock despite worries about harming endangered species.

During his eight years on the Santa Rosa City Council, Chris Rogers spent hour after tedious hour in local transportation meetings discussing a proposal to reduce congestion on one of the main traffic arteries into the Napa-Sonoma Valley corridor.

That’s why Rogers, now a rookie Democratic assemblymember, said he had to chuckle when environmental groups complained that a bill making its way through the Legislature was somehow “fast-tracking” the long-stalled Highway 37 widening project in the North Bay.

“When you’re talking about a project that was started or at least conceived before you were born … and somebody’s calling it ‘fast tracking,’ it just doesn’t track,” Rogers said at a committee hearing last week. “The project should have been done already.”

Assembly Bill 697 by Lori Wilson, a Democrat from the Fairfield area, would allow state highway officials to potentially harm three protected bird species and endangered mice as workers add new lanes to a stretch of Highway 37 to wine country.

It’s another example of California Democrats trying to speed up major construction projects such as housing and public infrastructure that can sometimes stall for decades due to the state’s stringent environmental regulations.

Last week, the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee voted to advance the measure. The 13 members of the committee, including Rogers, weren’t persuaded by the objections from a Native American tribe, environmentalists and transportation advocacy groups that oppose widening highways. They argue that research shows that adding lanes doesn’t reduce congestion.

Transportationbicycle paths, Highway 37, salt marsh, sea level rise, trains

North Coast rail dispute intensifies with competing bids from Skunk Train and coal export company

June 3, 2022

Andrew Graham, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

A mysterious Wyoming-based firm believed to be pushing a controversial coal-by-rail export proposal along the Northern California coast has made a new filing with a powerful federal board to advance its bid to seize control over the defunct lines running between Willits and Eureka.

The June 1 filing indicated the so-named North Coast Railroad Company, which wants to ship Rocky Mountain coal out of the port at Humboldt Bay, had at least $15 million in the bank — enough to clear an initial federal hurdle in which a company must prove it can cover the cost of a line’s scrap steel and two years of maintenance.

But that company is not the only entity vying for control of abandoned track running through Mendocino and Humboldt counties — along a right of way state lawmakers hope will one day welcome a 320-mile multiuse trail stretching south to San Francisco Bay.

In an unrelated venture, Mendocino Railway, owners of the tourist excursion Skunk Train, are petitioning the federal rail board to restore 11 miles of track north of Willits to run loads of gravel. Mendocino Railway also filed with the board indicating it had the resources to take on that project.

Either bid could complicate the more broadly-supported venture: the proposed Great Redwood Trail, a recreational route planned from Eureka in the north to Larkspur in Marin County on the south. A state agency has already begun planning the conversion of abandoned segments of the rail line in Mendocino and Humboldt counties for the trail.

The three competing ventures must now vie for the endorsement of the U.S. Transportation Board, a body that aims to preserve the nation’s rail corridors but has proven amenable to allowing recreational trails along disused rights of way.

Climate Change & Energy, Land Usecoal trains, Eel River, fossil fuel infrastructure, fossil fuels industry, Great Redwood Trail, North Coast Railroad Company, trains

Op-Ed: California needs to put its money where its mouth is on public transportation

May 24, 2022

Jeff Morales, CALMATTERS

Decades of federal and state transportation policy and funding have focused primarily on the automobile — and the roads and highways needed for us to get around in them. While this focus produced many benefits, it also ignored or created significant problems, such as greenhouse gas emissions, a key driver of climate change. Today, half of all greenhouse gas emissions in California come from transportation.

Agencies and processes have been built to support this focus. Caltrans and regional transportation agencies receive federal and state funds not only to build and maintain, but also to develop highway and road improvements — doing the planning, public engagement, preliminary design, environmental and other work needed to get projects ready. It can take years for major projects to make it through the approvals required before construction can start. Significant resources are dedicated to this annually, and there are statewide structures in place to carry it out. It is necessary work in order to have a pipeline of projects ready to be implemented when funding becomes available.

No parallel system is in place for public transit and rail projects, however.

Much of this structural disconnect flows down from decades of federal policy and funding constraints. For the most part, public transit and rail improvements are a series of one-off projects, with local agencies on the hook to develop and advance them. Unless the governor and Legislature address this, California’s ambitious climate-related goals for increased public transit and rail will not be realized. If the state wants to change the outcomes, then it is vital that it change the processes and funding that produce the outcomes.

Transportationbus, public transit, trains