Toll hikes for 7 bridges up to voters
If measure passes June 5, $3 bump over seven years would raise $4.45B
SAN FRANCISCO >> Bay Area voters now will decide which is worse — unrelenting traffic or paying up to $9 to cross a bridge.
The Bay Area Toll Authority on Wednesday voted unanimously to place a $3 toll hike on the June 5 ballot in all nine counties. If approved, the $4.45 billion measure is expected to be at least a partial answer to the traffic woes plaguing commuters.
Under the proposal, the tolls on all seven stateowned bridges would rise by $1 on Jan. 1, 2019, with subsequent $1 increases in 2022 and 2025. That would bring tolls to $8 on every bridge but the Bay
Bridge, where tolls would be $9 during peak commute hours. The Golden Gate Bridge, which is owned and operated by the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District, would not be subject to the toll increases.
Supporters of the proposal say the money is badly needed to combat the everincreasing traffic on Bay Area highways and to ensure that the region’s economy keeps growing.
“Traffic and overcrowded transit systems are costing commuters hundreds of dollars a year in lost time and fuel and robbing them of time better spent with
family and other activities,” said Jim Wunderman, president and CEO of the Bay Area Council, a business sponsored policy advocacy group. “(Regional Measure 3) gives us a fighting chance to get a handle on Bay Area traffic.”
The toll hikes are expected to generate billions of dollars over 25 years to help complete 35 specific projects across the Bay Area. That includes money to help BART buy more train cars so the agency can carry more passengers by running longer trains, extend Caltrain into downtown San Francisco, bring BART to San Jose’s Diridon Station, add express lanes on major freeways, improve ferry service and fund pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure near transit stops,
among others.
Though the project doesn’t fund everything Bay Area residents might hope for or want, it will move a number of needed projects closer to the finish line, said Joël Ramos, the regional planning director at TransForm, a transportation and social justice advocacy organization. Money from the toll increases will help upgrade the Clipper card system and potentially allow Bay Area transit agencies to offer income-based fare discounts, he said.
“It doesn’t make our wildest transportation dreams come true for all the Bay Area,” Ramos said, “but it certainly touches on enough of them to get us excited.”
The proposal includes a 50 percent discount for drivers who cross more
than one bridge in a day and requires the toll authority to establish an independent oversight committee. Once approved, the toll authority can index tolls to inflation without having to come back to voters.
But not everyone was in support of the project. David Schonbrunn, of the transportation policy advocacy group Transportation Solutions Defense and Education Fund (Transdef), urged the authority not to give any more funding or power to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which is in charge of distributing money collected from tolls.
He blasted the commission for what he called decades of policy failures that have led to more congestion on Bay Area roadways
than ever before and claimed fewer people now take transit. In 1970, when the commission was established, 11.3 percent of residents rode transit as their primary mode of commuting. In 2015, the last year for which data was available, 12 percent rode transit, according to the MTC.
“This is not an agency the public should be giving more money to,” Schonbrunn said. “We will turn (Regional Measure 3) into a referendum on the job MTC is doing.”
Earlier polls have shown support for the proposal. A poll in July commissioned by the Bay Area Council and Silicon Valley Leadership Group, along with the transportation policy thinktank SPUR, found 56 percent of the roughly 9,000 respondents
said they would “probably” or “definitely” vote yes, compared with 43 percent who said they would “probably” or “definitely” vote no.
A later poll by the consulting firm EMC Research found similar results, with 54 percent of the more than 4,100 likely voters saying they would support the increases. However, that number increased when respondents were asked about specific projects.
Surprisingly, there was no significant difference in support for the measure between respondents who said they pay a bridge toll nearly every day and those who said they rarely do.
The measure needs a simple majority across all nine counties in order to pass.