Just a walking block away from Geyserville Avenue, the Remmel Road Park & Ride lot finds itself perfectly situated for a train station. Until a few months ago, few even gave it a second thought. Now, with the advancing energy of a train full of promise, the community is showing up and showing support for a SMART stop in Geyserville, en route to its eventual destination in Cloverdale.
REASONS WHY SMART’s director, Eddy Cumins, outlines the benefits of having a rail station in Geyserville at the Aug. 10 community meeting.
It was only in June that the Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit agency voted to pursue the Geyserville station, roughly midway between Healdsburg and Cloverdale. That decision essentially cut in half the 18-mile final jump of the SMART network, and the stop’s inclusion seems like a no-brainer today.
As Executive Director Eddy Cumins told the standing-room-only crowd at the Oriental Community Hall on Hwy 128 just over the river east of town, that location makes raising money easier. When the local state senator found out that Geyserville would be passed by, he encouraged the passage of a new bill that rewrote the rules for SMART stations so the unincorporated town could get the station.
“It’s always helpful to have Mark McGuire living in the neighborhood,” Cumins said.
Adding the Geyserville station helps “maximize the SMART system,” the director said. After all, if a train runs 30-40 times a day and doesn’t stop, that would be a problem. He emphasized that the Geyserville station is not a diversion from the Cloverdale extension but a catalyst for it, permitting the agency to apply for more modest grants, federal and state support for one leg at a time—“strategic segmentation,” he called it.
The 18-mile stretch between Healdsburg and Cloverdale is difficult to fund as a single grant. By adding Geyserville, SMART can split the extension into two “usable segments,” making grant applications more competitive.
After introducing about 30 SMART employees who lined up on the stage next to him, Cumins asked for a show of hands to determine how many of those attending would support the Geyserville station—and a wave of hands went up, signifying widespread local embrace of the idea.
However, support was not unanimous. One man, who gave his name as John Spiker, asked for the microphone to make his case—that if one adds up all the people in a segment, like Healdsburg to Geyserville, and divides that into the money budgeted for the leg, it would add up to about $97,000 per person, “enough for everyone to buy an EV,” he claimed.
While no one doubted his figures, the premise sounded absurd and he received little more than laughter for his comparison. Cumins noted that the project relies heavily on state and federal grants ($735M secured since 2008), and these funds are “use it or lose it.” If not spent in Sonoma County, they would be allocated to major metropolitan areas like Los Angeles or Chicago.
The director reported record ridership on the SMART line, now averaging 5,500 daily riders, surpassing pre-Covid levels. Naysayers pointed out those numbers were achieved by offering free tickets for seniors and students. But as Tom Schwedhelm, a candidate for 4th District County Supervisor, said, such incentives helped “change the culture” around public transportation.
“My four-year-old grandson knows how to get on and off trains better than I do,” he said, speaking of a recent visit to Boston to visit family. “We’re changing people’s behaviors so that this is actually a viable transportation option here in Sonoma County. That’s what’s exciting for me.”
The Geyserville station is expected to be formally endorsed at the next SMART Board of Directors meeting on Aug. 19. For more information, visit sonomamarintrain.org/geyserville.
