SMART plans restoration of weekday trips
SMART is nearing an almost full recovery of its pre-pandemic service levels with a plan to restore more weekday trips next month.
The Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit board voted unanimously this week to restore 10 more weekday trips per day beginning June 13 for a total of 36 trips per weekday. At its peak service in late 2019 and early 2020, the service ran 38 weekday trips on its 45-mile rail before the onset of the pandemic dropped that number to a low of 16 trips.
SMART staff said they also reworked the train schedules to better align with the schedules of local buses and ferries.
“Not only is it going to be more frequent, but it's going to connect better to the overall system,” Eddy Cumins, the SMART general manager, told the district board Wednesday.
Three morning trips and two afternoon trips
will be added in each direction beginning June 13. New southbound trips from the Sonoma County Airport station will depart at 4:39 a.m., 6:39 a.m., 7:42 a.m., 2:53 a.m. and 6:05 p.m. New northbound trips out of Larkspur will depart at 6:08 a.m., 7:50 a.m., 8:45 a.m., 4:31 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
While the train schedule will be similar to what existed before the pandemic, SMART ridership and Bay Area transit ridership numbers have not recovered to those levels.
“For this service change, we didn't want to assume that everything was exactly like it was pre-COVID,” SMART planner Emily Betts told the board Wednesday. “We know we're operating in a changing planning landscape.”
In deciding whether to restore more weekday trips, Betts said staff compared ridership during the pandemic and pre-pandemic and reviewed highway traffic data, public comments, transfers to other services and schedules of other transit providers.
SMART has set an ambitious target of increasing ridership in the next year to about 50,000 people per month. Ridership in March was 35,300 people.
Cumins and other SMART staff say increasing the frequency of trains will attract more riders by accommodating different schedules and reducing wait times during transfers to other transit services such as Golden Gate Ferry in Larkspur. Staff also noted that Highway 101 traffic has returned to about 90% of its pre-pandemic levels.
“The timing couldn't be any better given with what we're seeing at the pumps these days and just giving our community more access, more options,” said SMART board member Eric Lucan, mayor of Novato.
The decision to restore more weekday trips also comes shortly after SMART resumed Sunday train service May 1 for the first time since the pandemic began.
Cumins told the board that the agency does not need to hire more staff to cover the increased trips because SMART did not lay off employees during the pandemic. There will be additional costs such as diesel fuel, especially from the global price increases.
SMART is preparing a budget for the upcoming fiscal year to include an additional $578,000 to cover fuel costs, according to SMART spokesman Matt Stevens.
Increasing the frequency of train trips is limited by SMART's single-track system. Trains arrive about every 32 minutes under the current schedule. Betts said this schedule can make it difficult to align with other transit services such as buses.
Cumins said the agency plans to work with the state to see whether passing sidings could be added to increase the frequency of trains. One potential area for a siding would be south of Petaluma between Haystack Bridge and Novato, Cumins said. He said SMART needs to operate under a headway of every 30 minutes to best align with bus transfers.