SMART’s leadership got some advice it has heard before.

The 2022-23 Marin County Civil Grand Jury has told SMART’s board and administration that it needs to build more public support if it expects to win voters’ passage of an extension of its 20-year tax.

Time is running out, the grand jury warned SMART.

The jurors, a court-empaneled collection of civic-spirited Marin residents, are right.

SMART got the same message from voters in 2020 when it sought a 30-year extension of its bi-county sales tax. The measure was clobbered at the polls.

SMART’s shortcomings — among them its failure to achieve mileage of service and anticipated ridership promised in the 2008 tax measure’s campaign — were politically effective fodder for its well-funded opposition.

Slower-than-promised progress in building a parallel bi-county bike path and its reluctance to provide clear counts of the trains’ ridership didn’t help. It quickly become clear that SMART couldn’t repeat the support it won in 2008.

In fact, instead of winning the two-thirds majority needed for passage, SMART’s Measure I was backed by only 56% Marin voters and a stunning 52% in Sonoma County.

Since then, SMART’s leadership has focused on regaining public support. It has reduced fares and increased ridership, almost to pre-pandemic levels. It is extending SMART north of Santa Rosa, to Windsor, making progress in its 2008 promise to reach Cloverdale.

Its new leadership, including the transit-management expertise of new general manager Eddy Cummins, has also increased focus on the so-called “last mile,” providing transit from SMART’s stops to job and shopping destinations. Its new shuttle between the SMART stop and the Santa Rosa Airport could be a model for other locales.

But the grand jury says SMART faces a 2029 deadline by which it needs voters to extend the special quarter-cent sales tax they have been paying over the past 14 years.

In its 2020 measure, SMART was seeking a 30-year extension. That’s too long for a service that had fallen short of its original promise. Failing to keep its promise to build a parallel bike path undermined the enthusiastic support from bicycle riders whose campaigning bolstered the 2008 measure’s victory.

Building a successful campaign for a tax extension is also going to take strong political leadership, which was late in coming in 2020.

SMART’s directors will need to build a campaign long before Election Day.

SMART is an important part of the multi-modal strategy for meeting the North Bay’s transportation needs.

Critics like to focus on the costly taxpayer subsidy, but very few transit systems pay their own way at the farebox. SMART is rightly focusing on building mileage and ridership, lowering its fares to make them more equitable and promoting the benefits of its service. Making public transit affordable to more people should help its support.

SMART is headed in the right direction, but the grand jury is right, now is not too early to start building confidence and strong support for extending its tax. It is going to take a lot more time and energy to reverse the defeat voters handed SMART in 2020.