A nickel here, a dime there, a dollar more, who cares. The cost of going into San Fran is now approaching $10. Not much to the banker or attorney, but the office worker holding a job in the Market St. area of San Fran, that is $50 a week. Today it is another $1.50—to finance the dirty, disease and crime ridden BART—which has lost about 40% of its riders. It already run a deficit of one billion year. These tolls are like flushing money down the toilet.
“A bill that would impose a $1.50 toll increase on Bay Area bridges to provide emergency funding for BART, Muni and other transit operators has sparked a debate over whether the added charge will fall disproportionately on lower-income commuters already struggling with the region’s high cost of living.
This is just another reason NOT to go to San Fran and visit a war zone.
Bridge Toll Increase Would Help Transit. How Much Would It Hurt Drivers?
Dan Brekke, KQED, 8/19/23 https://www.kqed.org/news/11958604/bridge-toll-increase-would-help-transit-how-much-will-it-hurt-commuters
A bill that would impose a $1.50 toll increase on Bay Area bridges to provide emergency funding for BART, Muni and other transit operators has sparked a debate over whether the added charge will fall disproportionately on lower-income commuters already struggling with the region’s high cost of living.
That issue was at the top of a list of concerns raised in a letter last month from seven Bay Area members of Congress (PDF), led by Rep. Mark De Saulnier (D-Walnut Creek), that urged Gov. Gavin Newsom and state legislative leaders to oppose the bill. The Bay Area Council, a group counting 300 businesses and institutions as members, has also expressed similar displeasure with the toll increase bill, SB 532, by state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco).
“Many employees now have the advantage to do their work from home,” the letter concluded. “There are others, the working people of the Bay Area, that don’t share this advantage, and the proposed toll hike comes straight out of their wallets.”
But a new analysis from SPUR, a regional planning and public policy think tank, challenges some of the assumptions behind that argument.
In a report (PDF) released this week, SPUR said a study of traffic patterns on the region’s seven state-owned bridges shows that two-thirds of drivers make just one toll crossing a week. That finding would mean those drivers’ weekly exposure to higher tolls would be limited to a single $1.50 charge.
The analysis also found just a small fraction of bridge users — 8% — cross more than one bridge per trip.
And finally, SPUR said a side-by-side comparison of bridge users and BART passengers shows that, in general, those driving over the bridges have significantly higher incomes than people taking the train. At the same time, BART customers are more likely to be traveling to work than those crossing the toll bridges.
Taken as a whole, SPUR says the analysis shows that those who drive across the bridges are more likely to be able to absorb the cost of the higher bridge tolls while lower-income transit users, like those who use BART, would lose out if a lack of funding forces agencies to slash service.
The analysis is based on modeling by Replica, a big-data firm with offices in Oakland that used census, toll payment, cell phone, credit card and other public and private information to create a “synthetic representation” of travel patterns.
‘When you’re looking at the bridge and the people driving across it, a lot of those folks are not engaged in their day-to-day commute … It’s people making regional trips, people making occasional work trips, people going to the airport, people visiting, shopping.’Sebastian Petty, transportation policy manager, SPUR
Sebastian Petty, transportation policy manager at SPUR, said in an interview he was surprised at the high number of drivers who make a toll crossing just once a week.
“When you’re looking at the bridge and the people driving across it, a lot of those folks are not engaged in their day-to-day commute,” he said. “Certainly many of them are, but it’s not as though, you know, 80 out of 100 cars are doing their day-to-day commute trip. It’s people making regional trips, people making occasional work trips, people going to the airport, people visiting, shopping.”
Petty said the data in the report suggest a number of ways SB 532 could be amended to reduce the impact on lower-income drivers who make more frequent trips across the toll bridges. One way to do that, he said, was to cap the number of weekly toll crossings for which individual drivers would be charged the extra $1.50.
“If you wanted to make sure that you weren’t over cost-burdening lower-income folks who are working an in-person job and need to show up five days a week, you could still capture a significant majority of the bridge traffic if you were to cap the toll at something like a maximum of three crossings per week,” Petty said.
Similarly, drivers who must use two or more bridges could be given a “long-distance discount” and only charged for one toll crossing per trip.
SB 532 would hike tolls by $1.50 for five years starting next Jan. 1. Sen. Wiener says the increase would raise as much as $900 million for Bay Area transit operators who face major deficits beginning in 2025.
Supporters include BART, AC Transit, public transportation advocacy groups, environmental activists, nine YIMBY chapters and the cities of San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley. Seven state lawmakers from the region have signed on to the bill as co-authors.
Wiener has acknowledged the equity issue posed by the proposed toll increases and has amended his bill to direct the Metropolitan Transportation Commission to devise a program over the next two years to reduce the hike’s impact on lower-income drivers.
But that amendment has done little to soften the opposition from some elected officials. In addition to the seven House members who raised objections to the bill, several state lawmakers, mostly from outlying parts of the Bay Area, have also said they’re against the toll increase.
One of the chief concerns is that the $1.50 toll increase will come on top of a series of other increases approved by Bay Area voters in 2018. Regional Measure 3 has raised tolls on the Antioch, Benicia, Carquinez, Richmond-San Rafael, Bay, San Mateo and Dumbarton bridges to $7 over the last several years. If SB 532 passes, the rate will go up to $8.50 in January. And the next toll increase under RM3 will add a dollar to that on New Year’s Day 2025.
With the bill needing a two-thirds majority in both the state Assembly and Senate to pass, the split in the regional delegation raises questions about prospects for the bill’s success.
The Bay Area Council has been the leading voice in opposing the measure. Besides expressing concerns about the higher tolls’ impact on lower-income drivers, the group has insisted that public transit agencies must improve performance on a range of issues — including public safety, cleanliness, reliability and offering more “seamless” service for passengers — before new public funding is approved.
Much of the council’s attention has been focused on BART, with the group issuing several calls in recent months for the agency to toughen enforcement of passenger conduct rules and to speed up installation of a new generation of fare gates to deter those who enter the system without paying.
BART has responded by approving a 22% pay increase for its police force, a step meant to retain officers and help fill nearly 30 vacant positions in its Police Department.
And ahead of a crucial Assembly Appropriations Committee vote on SB 532 this week, BART General Manager Robert Powers will host a ride-along with Sen. Wiener to show off the agency’s recent “safety, cleanliness and reliability improvements.”
The ride-along will begin at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 22, at Civic Center station and visit West Oakland station and the BART police “integrated security response center,” a facility that handles police dispatch calls and includes monitors for the system’s 4,000 surveillance cameras.
