Healdsburg rejects downtown SMART station
Haste and nostalgia combine to keep more traffic in downtown Healdsburg
The Healdsburg City Council last Tuesday decided to locate its upcoming SMART station on a site outside it’s downtown core despite a last minute push from a regional coalition led by Santa Rosa YIMBY that also included the Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition, Friends of SMART, Seamless Bay Area, the Bay Area Council, and the North Bay Leadership Council. The City Council’s decision offered a fascinating glimpse into the ways cars, traffic, and nostalgia intertwine to affect how cities develop.
Ever since SMART was first funded by Measure Q in 2008, the assumption (between both Healdsburg and SMART) has been that the station would be located at the defunct railroad depot off Harmon street, approximately 2,000 feet south of Healdsburg Plaza. Then, in summer 2023, as the SMART extension to Healdsburg inched closer to reality, Healdsburg asked SMART to consider additional sites closer to the plaza. Two sites were identified, but a general consensus emerged between SMART and Council members that a site off Vine Street between W. North and W. Matheson, just 620 feet from the plaza, was the preferred alternative if the city was to chose a site other than the depot. See SMART’s presentation here.
From a purely transit perspective, the Vine Street site is superior to the depot by basically every metric. Healdsburg is small wine-country hamlet rich with hotels, restaurants, and tasting rooms packed daily with tourists, waiters, dishwashers and housekeepers who mostly live elsewhere. The closer SMART brings them to their destinations, the more attractive taking SMART becomes relative to driving alone for these workers. The downtown Vine Street site is clearly superior in this regard in that it’s a two minute walk to the Plaza, where most of the Healdsburg’s restaurants are clustered.
The depot, by contrast, is an 8 minute walk for a healthy adult. That might not sound like much, but 8 minutes for a healthy adult is easily 16 minutes for a senior or person with mobility issues, which then becomes 32 minutes of walking roundtrip just to get to and from your final destination from SMART, not counting however long it took to walk to SMART from your origin. How many Petalumans visiting Healdsburg for dinner will opt to drive once they learn taking SMART will add 32 minutes to their journey relative to driving? How many workers living in Santa Rosa? Going forward, how many of the projected 17,000 homes being built in Sonoma County cities with SMART trains between now and 2031 will be within a five minute walk of SMART? How many of these new residents will be plausible visitors or workers in Healdsburg? In other words, how much more traffic would the downtown Vine Street location have removed from Healdsburg streets vs. the more distant depot site?
Unfortunately we’ll never know. In the face of SMART General Manager Eddy Cumins request that the city take no action and allow for additional analysis, the City Council voted 3-5 to move forward with plans to develop the depot site. Councilmembers Edwards and Kelley requested additional analysis while Councilmembers Hagele, Mitchell, and Herrod not only wanted to move forward with the depot, they added said no amount of additional analysis would change their view.
Public comment on this multi-million dollar, multi-generational decision included 11 in-person comments in-favor of the Depot and four comments in favor of the downtown Vine Street location. Those in favor of the depot site argued the downtown site would cause traffic because it would have to cross the roundabout into downtown, which SMART is going to do anyways when it extends north to Cloverdale in ~2027. They also argued from nostalgia, that the depot had to be restored because that’s where the station once was and vibes demand it. Others argued that locating SMART downtown would worsen parking since the downtown station would likely require converting ~55 currently public parking spots into exclusively for SMART. Though it must also be pointed out that SMART is projected to bring at least ~450 daily riders, probably more than 50 of whom would have otherwise driven making downtown SMART a net parking solution. The most compelling argument in favor of the depot is that would help activate the southern end of downtown which is slated to add more housing in the next few years. Which is good, but not better. Even with new housing at the depot, Healdsburg is going to remain a net importer of daily visitors/workers for the foreseeable future.
In short, SMART can benefit Healdsburg residents mostly in alleviating traffic caused by Healdsburg workers and visitors, not by mode shifting their current car trips to elsewhere on the SMART route. Unfortunately, these workers and visitors don’t live and vote in Healdsburg. The depot site isn’t terrible. It’s just unfortunate to watch, yet again, another Bay Area city snatch mediocrity from the jaws of victory.
Is there an opportunity for TOD at this station location?
It seems that SMART is caving to the short-term interests of loud People For NO Change instead of attractive and efficient mass transit. The walk from SMART to the ferry is too far for me (a senior going to San Francisco for the day) and now they are creating additional barriers for those who need transit the most: workers, seniors, people with mobility assistance devices, baby strollers, etc. The goal needs to get people out of their cars. For those who care about air quality, climate change, and even (dare I say) traffic congestion, transit stations should be right at destinations.