A comment period begins soon for a proposal to raise tolls on the Bay Area’s seven state-owned toll bridges starting in 2026, according to the Bay Area Toll Authority.
The proposed toll hikes would piggyback on a $3 increase approved by voters in the nine-county area as Regional Measure 3 in 2018 that added a $1 increase in 2019, another in 2022 and will add a final $1 increase on Jan. 1, 2025, bringing the toll for regular two-axle cars and trucks to $8 to cross a bridge.
The bridges affected by the upcoming toll increase and proposed additional increase are the Bay, Antioch, Benicia-Martinez, Carquinez, Dumbarton, Richmond-San Rafael and San Mateo-Hayward bridges.
The proposal was presented Wednesday to BATA, which oversees toll revenue from the seven bridges and is directed by the same board as the Metropolitan Transportation Commission that serves as the transportation planning, financing and coordinating agency for the nine-county Bay Area.
It proposes increasing tolls for cars and trucks to $8.50 in 2026, then for people who use FasTrak tags, it would increase to $9 in 2027, $9.50 in 2028, $10 in 2029 and $10.50 in 2030. People not using FasTrak and instead using a preregistered license plate account or paying by an invoice mailed to them would have to pay an extra 25-cent premium starting in 2027.
The toll authority says the proposal comes as it is collecting less revenue each year than would have been expected before the COVID-19 pandemic, while construction costs have also gone up more than 30% since 2020.
“I’m sensitive to the overall cost of living in the Bay Area,” Napa County and BATA and MTC chair Alfredo Pedroza said in a statement about the toll hike proposal. “Working families really feel the impact, not just in transportation but back at home with utilities, groceries, children. This one is hard. But it’s the right thing to do.”
People wanting to give their opinion on the proposal will have the opportunity to do so in various ways during a comment period that begins Nov. 4 and runs through Dec. 3. People can send emails to info@bayareametro.gov with “Proposed 2026 Toll Increase” in the subject line, or send mail to the MTC’s Public Information Office at 375 Beale St., Suite 800, San Francisco, CA 94105.
They can also attend a webinar Nov. 13 at 6:30 p.m. or go to a public hearing in San Francisco on Nov. 20.
More details about the proposal can be found at https://mtc.ca.gov/about-mtc/authorities/bay-area-toll-authority/proposed-2026-toll-increase-hov-policy-updates.
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JustMike650 said:
HOW ABOUT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2bx3FzgJ6o
Dirk van Ulden said:
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(4) comments
I drive the bridge everyday to go to my office - worst part of my day because it takes 30 minutes to even get out of San Carlos then I deal with Main Character Syndrome on the roads. What are we paying taxes for? For illegal immigrant trash? For DEI BS? California is a joke - if my business wasn't an integral part of local society here I would take off and never look back. Off the grid is the only solution for intelligent people.
Well of course tolls will rise. When have tolls ever gone down? When you have ever increasing pensions and benefits to pay for, you’ll have ever increasing tolls. When you continue to subsidize revenue losing transportation options, you’ll have ever increasing tolls. Vote out the folks who keep authorizing toll increases else it’s only a matter of time before tolls are $20/crossing. Who knows, maybe they’ll start charging tolls going both ways to prevent folks driving only in the non-toll direction.
Terrence, good points. There is a high percentage of drivers who do not use Fastrak transponders and ignore the invoice they receive. Our soft on crime government does nothing to collect, thus like insurance carriers, they now need to raise tolls so the responsible drivers can pay the for the drivers who game the system. There were 12.5 MILLION toll violations in 2023 which equates to about $87 Million dollars.
"When you continue to subsidize revenue losing transportation options" - that would be the car-centric building of bridges in the first place. Why does none of these bridges feature public transportation? Why does hardly any of them have bike lanes? There is little competition to those bridges. Caltrans created a monopoly here that they can milk forever and use that money to subsidize other bad projects like the 101 highway-widening, the 84/101 Interchange, or the 92/101 Interchange. Somebody has to pay for those bad projects, so they go after the bridge users. Meanwhile the leadership at BART, Caltrain, and SamTrans seem to be doing everything to sabotage public transportation in the process.
The current $7 toll is spent on bridge, highway and transit projects around the Bay Area: After covering administration and toll collection costs, each dollar is spent as follows:
- First Dollar: bridge operations and maintenance, Regional Measure 1 projects, transit capital and transit operations
- Second Dollar: toll bridge seismic retrofit work
- Third Dollar: Regional Measure 2 investments
- Fourth Dollar: toll bridge seismic retrofit work
- Fifth Dollar: toll bridge seismic retrofit work
- Sixth Dollar: Regional Measure 3 investments
- Seventh Dollar: Regional Measure 3 investments
Several years ago it was reported seismic retrofit work was finished, so these three dollars are probably used for administration and more of the other horrendous car projects.
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