Among the most cherished of Progressive pipe dreams is inter-city light rail. Not the classic, steam and smoke belching juggernauts that drove American commerce for over a century while hauling goods from coast to coast. The Birkenstock set are agog over electric people movers, pure and simple. Advocates love to cite (as examples of successful urban transit) cities such as London, Paris, New York, etc. forgetting to mention, of course, that the majority of urban transit preceded the auto and its effects on cities. In the hopes of rolling back time, and forcing the hated gas-guzzling moto-genie back into its bottle, fantasies such as the Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit are foisted on a gullible public with low-ball-cost and inflated-usage estimates. I’ll bet they’d promise that the trains will be solar-powered, but they know that even Progressives are not that dumb.