Daily Archives: November 27, 2018

Economist Mike Arnold argues that the Sonoma-Marin “SMART” commuter train is “falling short of its promises,” and those who say it is doing well are using “alternative facts” (or, as Colbert would say, “truthiness”). Among other things, he says that, of 26 commuter rail operations in the U.S., SMART’s ridership ranks only number 23.

That might not be fair considering that many commuter rail systems operate over far greater distances than SMART, whose line is 43 miles long. For a better idea of how the SMART train stacks up, I compiled data for other new commuter-rail operations below. I left out legacy operations in New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and CalTrains in San Francisco as these are all going to do far better than most of the new ones. I also left out Amtrak’s Downeaster, which is an intercity (Boston-Portland) train that the FTA includes in its database as it has received from FTA funding. I included lines the FTA calls “hybrid rail” such as trains in Austin and Portland as the local transit agencies often call these commuter rail. All of the data are from the 2017 National Transit Database except for the SMART train, which didn’t begin operating until FY 2018; for this I took data from Arnold’s article.