Ich bin ein Mariner: Geben Sie uns glänzende Züge

July 24, 2008

In honor of he who gives hope and awesome speeches — a round up of train news.

CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS
I agree with Northbayist that the SMART campaign has been lackluster at best. NBayist offers some reasons why. SMART has now created the North Bay Transportation Alliance…Sexy. They have just announced they will be beginning to contact voters in August. August? Umm..guys. That is about 90 days to explain to voters why they need to spend more in sales taxes in an economic downturn for a system that was voted down by Marinites last time it was on the ballot.

The Marin IJ is reporting that this newfangled North Bay Transportation Alliance is pleading with Supervisors not to put a sales tax measure for open space, fire protection, and farmland protection.

“What we worry about is that in a difficult economic time and on a ballot that will ask for a lot of financial contributions from all Californians, the presence of this measure in November will create a competition that will not only put the SMART measure at risk but also threaten the success of this important measure.”

What puts SMART at risk is that they have to make the argument how this will benefit Marin County residents enough to add a quarter cent to the sales tax. They have to demonstrate how Marinites will get to work any better if they work in San Francisco or the East Bay over a BART system. Despite it being declared politically DOA, Marin and the North Bay really need BART, a system that will take Marin and Sonoma County residents where the bulk of the jobs are. More and more people are contacting me about this idea. Living in Marin, I really do feel trapped here where there are not that many jobs to choose from. We really should be connecting the North Bay to the Richmond station.

CRAZY TRAINS

Mental wounds still screaming
Driving me insane
Im going off the rails on a crazy train

The folks from SMART really should look at what the California High-Speed Rail is doing to get votes this November. Before seeing this website, I had told the folks on SMART that people want to see animations taking them through the system.

The California High-Speed Rail is a 9.95 Billion dollar bond initiative will be on the November ballot to build this crazy amazing bullet train for California. The 800 mile system would go from San Diego to Sacramento and eventually into the San Francisco Bay Area. Even though Mister Marin Maven has guaranteed that this will only end in tears over cost-overruns and will end up an enormous boondoggle, I will vigorously vote for it. Why? The crazy animations they have on there website showing you what you get for your investment. Shiny trains! Shiny train stations! You can actually visualize going to the state of the art train stations and going to Los Angeles by train.

Meesa want shiny bullet trains! SMART? Meh.