Poll: Majority won’t ride SMART to work

The Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit is scheduled to be up and running by the end of 2016, but 63 percent of readers responding to an online Argus-Courier poll said they don’t plan on riding it to work.

Twenty-one percent of those responding to the poll said they would ride the SMART train to work, while 15 percent said “it depends.”

Here are some of the comments:

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“No parking is provided near the train station, so I guess it’s for west-side residents within walking distance only. If east-side residents were welcome on the other side of town there would be parking available.”

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“Big waste of money.”

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“No place to park.”

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“I can’t wait. It’ll be so much better than driving!”

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“Not yet. They need to do two things before it’ll be of use. 1. Provide parking other than the nearby neighborhood. 2. Eliminate the wildcard of ‘shuttle buses’ from San Rafael to Larkspur until a ferry station is built.”

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“I have to have my car for work, but I do plan on using it for nights out in Marin and Santa Rosa.”

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“It depends on the price, speed, efficiency, quality of ride, frequency of scheduling, how many stops on route to Larkspur ferry and parking.”

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“Too much effort to use it with no parking and no useful destinations.”

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“One continuous service to San Francisco is needed, anything less is hardly going to provide efficient travel time.”

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“I just hope they are good at coordinating with bus schedules, so when I get to my stop, I can easily use the bus to get the rest of the way to my destination.”

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“No way. If I took the train, I would have to transfer to a bus, which would actually extend my commute by at least another half-hour. What would be the point?”

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“I can’t take it to work - the line and the bus does not even come close to my office.”

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“It depends on parking.”

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“When I use public transportation I prefer that it actually go somewhere. SMART goes from nowhere to nowhere.”

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“I work at Kaiser in Terra Linda, if there is a stop nearby, I’ll definitely use the SMART train.”

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“If I get a job along the route I would.”

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“Dumb. It won’t be done then. They have tunnels to rebuild in Marin. The north Petaluma station is still undecided. It should be at the former Adobe Lumber site as that is close to at least 1,000 office and retail jobs. The train to nowhere will be proven to be a dud. An incredibly expensive dud.”

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“Golden Gate Transit bus service will be more convenient for me. Door-to-door service to San Francisco.”

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“Hell, no! This is why are roads have been neglected, to get this ‘train to nowhere’ up and running.”

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“I am retired, however, I will ride the train to Rohnert Park and Santa Rosa to shop.”

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“May ride it for fun sometime but don’t need it to commute or travel around the area.”

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