ARGUS-COURIER-Opinion-Editorial

Thursday, August 30, 2018

OTHER VIEWS

Save the Water Street Trestle

The SMART rail agency, which owns the trestle, should invest in renovation

By RALPH SCOTT AND MELANIE DADO

Look at them. With a 50-ton whisper, they zip past you with such green-grey elegance, a visceral moment instantly calling to mind Machine Age forebears like The Zephyr, The Flying Yankee and The National Limited.

It’s almost a pleasure to be stuck in traffic waiting for the flashing grade lights to lift off to the sky on the backs of crossing gates. Retro art in motion.

That’s what $600 million gets you — a beautiful rail line.

When SMART cashed in on that investment, which included state, federal and grant-based funding, they clearly took pride in the aesthetic opportunities ready-built into transportation by rail. After years of consideration, they selected streamlined diesel multiple unit trainsets from Sumitomo Corporation of America/Nippon Sharyo at a cost of $46.7 million, or $6.67 million for each two-car set.

The investment has paid off. Within the first six months, the service exceeded ridership and revenue projections. The elegance isn’t relegated to the façade; the interiors of SMART trains, outfitted with café cars that serve locally brewed beers and wines and state of the art WiFi, suggests an unspoken marriage of Pullman meets Star Trek.

More than 310,000 Sonoma County riders from Santa Rosa to San Rafael have paid the $3.50 per zone and $23 for roundtrip to experience the well-planned and carefully considered ambiance. Based on a story which first appeared in the Argus-Courier earlier this year, SMART had predicted it would collect $68,000 in fares each week. In fact, the agency is reported to be averaging about $76,000.

So how does SMART, a mass transit company that puts such high value on moving people in so aesthetically significant fashion at the same time neglect the biggest eyesore in the heart of downtown Petaluma — the Water Street Trestle?

Rather than walling off the decaying trestle with a green hurricane fence, while investing heavily in those green-grey streamlined passenger cars, shouldn’t SMART put some green into restoring the Water Street Trestle?

In 1904, city father, John McNear, and his son George P. McNear envisioned delivering farm fresh eggs to San Francisco via next day service. Their Petaluma & Santa Rosa Railway was a future-thinking clean electric alternative to coal-fired Southern Pacific engines.

When they pulled off this Herculean feat, they set up Petaluma to become the “Egg Basket of the World.” In 1922, energized by their success, they built the Water Street Trestle which became the commercial nexus between cold steel and warmer waters. McNear and son took farm fresh produce delivered by rail, from as far away as Forestville, to their Petaluma warehouse, dropped it on barges and ferried it from the City by a River to the City by the Bay.

Their model was soon studied by cities throughout the nation. And their vision put Petaluma on the national map. How many cities today are so fortunate to have a historic rail line running through them?

So, with a structure that quite arguably made the existence of Petaluma possible, why is SMART, which owns the property, allowing our city’s testament to engineering and a citizenry which, almost a century ago, recognized that an agricultural community is only as good as its ability to deliver its bounty, to rot away and drive away locals and tourists from the River’s edge?

If the city of Philadelphia melted down the Liberty Bell because, after all, if you want to start a revolution of any kind, you can always use a smart phone and Facebook, the country would explode in an uproar. Rather than walling off the decaying trestle with a green hurricane fence, while investing heavily in those green-grey streamlined passenger cars, shouldn’t SMART put some green, like from the $90 million they’ve allocated to restore the bike path along the rail line, into restoring the Water Street Trestle?

For those who conclude that mass transit companies shouldn’t shoulder the estimated $5 million cost of restoring the Water Street Trestle, it’s not like Petalumans are looking for a free ride here.

Back in 2010, tapping into the research resources of the Petaluma Trolley Living History Railway Museum, the city of Petaluma, persuasively arguing that the Trestle is a historic link between the water and the city, secured a nearly half-million-dollar grant from the California Coastal Conservancy.

That $475,000 check produced a 70-page structural engineering report that unequivocally concluded the trestle could be saved. That’s a lot of faith. The report silenced any doubters. Since the larger portion of each piling sits in the anaerobic (air-tight) river mud, more than 80 percent or close to 180 pilings have solidly stood up against daily tides and seasonal floods.

To passersby today, the trestle looks like it could barely hold a child’s Lionel locomotive. To the seasoned structural engineer, the Water Street Trestle’s weight distribution properties, once the trestle is retrofitted, can support another 80-ton locomotive. More importantly, it can support 1,000 people, like it used to do during the many craft festivals that used to adorn its deck and could again.

Unless, of course, SMART allows the trestle to die. Once it is gone, we can never get it back. They say if it’s not broke don’t fix it. Well it is broke, and it should be fixed to pristine condition. We owe this to ourselves and to our heritage.

The Water Street Trestle faired remarkably well under the weight of progress. For that, it permanently secured its position in Sonoma County and Northern California history as a historical landmark that can’t be torn down. The Trestle’s future rests in the hands of its owners. SMART needs to throw a little weight around as well and save the Water Street Trestle.

(Ralph Scott and Melanie Dado are with SaveTheTrestle.org.)

Sonoma marin area rapid transit, SMART, SMART Rail, S.M.A.R.T., Water Street Trestle, Petaluma Trestle, Petaluma Downtown, Petaluma River, Petaluma, new trains petaluma, train service petaluma, SMART schedule, SMART schedules. Save The Trestle, savethetrestle.org, savethetrestle,