Traffic gridlock a major concern

70% of polled residents favor big regional investment to fix flow, even if it raises taxes

The Bay Area’s traffic woes are so severe that more than two-thirds of the region’s residents surveyed in a new poll are demanding a major investment to fix the mess — even if that means stomaching higher taxes.

Traffic snarls have become so brutal and frequent that residents view the problem as an emergency that requires drastic solutions, according to a Bay Area Council 2017 poll, released Friday. The council is a business-sponsored, public policy advocacy organization.

“People are really at their wit’s end in terms of dealing with transportation and traffic problems in the Bay Area,” said Michael Cunningham, senior vice president for public policy with the council. “Every time our economy gets good, traffic gets bad. But traffic has never been this bad.”

The problem is severe enough that 70 percent of respondents demanded a “major regional investment” to improve Bay Area commutes, “even if it means raising taxes,” the poll revealed.

That level of support for investing in ways to reduce traffic is encouraging for the Bay Area Council, which may eventually push for higher taxes in the region to address traffic. The poll percentage suggests there might be enough support to surpass the two-thirds voter-approval threshold for boosting various types of taxes.

“I absolutely believe that people in the Bay Area accept that transportation and traffic are real challenges and are willing to put up funds,” said Stephen Levy, an economist and director of the Palo Alto-based Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy. “The Bay Area has been a very generous community when it comes to transportation funding.”

The percentage of those polled who believe it’s harder to travel around the Bay Area has grown in recent years. An estimated 60 percent felt that way in the new poll. That’s up from 54 percent in last year’s survey, 37 percent in 2015 and 25 percent in 2014.

“This is a growing problem. It’s terrible,” said Chuck Dougherty, a retiree who lives in San Jose. “It’s always bumper to bumper, stop and go, taking an hour and a half to get someplace that should really only take 20 minutes. That adds so much time you spend idling in traffic in your car, and creates so much pollution.”

Only 7 percent of those surveyed in the latest poll said they believe it’s actually easier to get around the Bay Area than in the past.

“There is no cavalry we can call on to save us,” said Jim Wunderman, president of the Bay Area Council. “It is time to take matters into our own hands.”

Yet even though people are infuriated by the region’s traffic, 81 percent of those surveyed said they are driving alone at least two to three times a week, for any purpose, including work, school or running errands. That’s up from 79 percent in 2016.

The council polled 1,000 residents across nine Bay Area counties in late January for its latest annual survey. Those counties were Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, San Mateo, San Francisco, Marin, Sonoma, Napa and Solano.

Sales-tax measures have been used frequently to finance transportation and transit improvements in the Bay Area. Yet because several Bay Area and neighboring counties have recently imposed new sales taxes, Levy said it might not be as easy to persuade people to increase taxes so soon.

Although the Bay Area Council acknowledged it may eventually push for higher taxes to address traffic in the region, its top priority today is supporting a plan by Gov. Jerry Brown to fix California’s roads and bridges, Cunningham said. The governor’s proposal would increase gasoline taxes and vehicle fees in order to raise $52 billion over 10 years, the largest such increase in state history.

“Right now, we are en- tirely focused on getting the state Legislature to pass this measure,” Cunningham said. “But once that is done, we are informed by this poll that a huge majority in the Bay Area want a big solution. We will go back to leaders in the Bay Area to see if the timing is right.”

Of the residents surveyed, 55 percent said they worried about the general cost of living in the Bay Area while 41 percent picked traffic as a big concern and 39 percent chose housing.

The region’s problems have become so severe that 40 percent of the region’s residents said they want to move away in the next few years, a marked increase from the 33 percent who said in the 2016 poll that they wanted to flee the area.