Editor,
State Sen. Josh Becker, in his guest perspective on Wednesday on the withdrawal of the bill to increase Bay Area bridge tolls to fund public transit operations, expressed interest in “possible alternatives.” One such alternative has been available to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area’s transportation agency, for decades – it just hasn’t decided to implement it because it faces a formidable challenge.
In 1997, Gov. Pete Wilson signed into law Assembly Bill 598 by Valerie Brown of Sonoma County. The bill authorizes MTC to write a ballot measure to impose what would be the state’s first regional gas tax of up to 10-cents per gallon to fund public transit improvements in the nine-county Bay Area. It would need to be approved by at least two-thirds of the voters, though the legislature could seek to lower that threshold. Similarly, the legislature might need to amend the bill to allow the tax revenue to be used for transit operations rather than capital projects.
Tuesday’s front-page article, “Bridge toll hike bill halted,” noted that the “current $7 toll for those [seven] bridges is also slated to rise $1 on Jan. 1, 2025, through Regional Measure 3 passed in 2017.” It’s time for the MTC to begin work on Regional Measure 4 that will apply to all drivers of internal combustion-powered vehicles in the Bay Area, not just those that drive on toll bridges, to make our region’s public transit financially sustainable.
Irvin Dawid
Burlingame
Please purchase a Premium Subscription to continue reading.
To continue, please log in, or sign up for a new account.
We offer one free story view per month. If you register for an account, you will get two additional story views. After those three total views, we ask that you support us with a subscription.
A subscription to our digital content is so much more than just access to our valuable content. It means you’re helping to support a local community institution that has, from its very start, supported the betterment of our society. Thank you very much!
Only subscribers can view and post comments on articles.
Already a subscriber? Login Here
Sorry, an error occurred.
Already Subscribed!
Cancel anytime
Thank you .
Your account has been registered, and you are now logged in.
Check your email for details.
Submitting this form below will send a message to your email with a link to change your password.
An email message containing instructions on how to reset your password has been sent to the email address listed on your account.
No promotional rates found.
Secure & Encrypted
Thank you.
Your gift purchase was successful! Your purchase was successful, and you are now logged in.
| Rate: | |
| Begins: | |
| Transaction ID: |
A receipt was sent to your email.
(7) comments
I suspect the author of this letter is firmly in the minority. The very notion that we do not yet pay enough gas (and sales) taxes is simply unimaginable. Is it possible that looking at cost savings in running these transit agencies might be just a consideration (not caving to every single stick-up for higher wages and incredible benefits the unions demand)? Scott Weiner has not been anointed as King, yet. He can infect SF with his fantasies, but the rest of the state should not be impacted by his dreaming.
I suspect Irwin is driving an EV as a typical freeloader or he is an employee of the bloated public transportation agencies. Taxes are not the answer, accountability is!
Yes. Talk about losing the forest for the trees. It's time to insist EVs have GPS tracking and pay by the mile for a "road tax". They weigh more than a lot of GVs due to the battery weight, so let's tax them even more than GVs.
So far most information in this post and comments is correct.
Gas Tax is too low in the US. Basically it has paid for absolutely nothing. Even in Europe, where gas tax is easily doubled, it still doesn't pay for the immense costs coming from car infrastructure.
If people want more car projects like the $600M for 101 express lanes, gas tax needs to be at least tripled to $0.12 per mile (up from currently $0.04 per mile).
E.g. Redwood City is planning a $2B Grade Separation project plus $500M for Woodside Interchange - that is $2.5B for car projects just in Redwood City or the whole yearly budget for Amtrak to cover all of US.
Higher Gas Taxes would stop a lot of people from joyriding. Sideshows and street racing alone tell you that gas and tyres are still to cheap.
But there is absolutely no accountability in Public Transit either.
Public Transit should be able to pay mostly for itself, once BART and SamTrans leadership actually start caring about their customers. SamTrans has done the following projects:
- Electrification is $400M over budget and 2-4 years behind, and yet Electric Trains are already bought and just standing around
- $80M is spend on a "experimental, expensive train", nothing says fiscal cliff as much as experimental and expensive
- SamTrans is willing to spend $136M on a new HQ
- SamTrans has no bus shelters, cities have no bus lanes
- Nobody does Safe-Routes-To-Transit in the Bay Area
=> none of these projects helps with customer service. It's really like these public transit agencies hate their customers. In fact these leaders look like they are sabotaging public transit on purpose.
easygerd - you made some excellent points. I beg to differ on the non-recovered cost of the infrastructure for automobiles. The infrastructure also makes it possible for those very same automobiles, trucks and buses to conduct business outside of the urban areas. All homeowners and businesses pay taxes so that makes more than up for the under collection in road and fuel taxes. Most tax increases and even the anticipated ones, as you highlighted, are simply wasted on new pet projects. It will never be enough for Becker and his ilk. .
Researchers knew all of that before, but in April 2020 San Mateo County started a huge experiment for everybody to see. The county's workforce was divided into people whose productivity was bound to a certain location. People whose productivity had nothing to do with location were forced to lock down. We called the people that had to leave their house "The Essentials". The Board of Supervisors also mandated a 5 mile travel limit, because in our county you can reach shopping, doctors, offices, hospitals, emergency services, etc. Basically everything you need for living is within 5 miles.
Result: The city became very quiet, I-280 was absolutely empty, SR-101 had tons of capacity, and nobody was riding buses or trains. Now a lot of office workers are still at home and yet streets are full and back to normal.
Every non-essential travel and every trip that exceeds 3-5 miles is joyriding.
Gas taxes should increase to pay for all the expenses benefitting drivers (101 express lanes, grade separation, interchanges, bridges, traffic lights, 12ft lanes, 2.5B parking spots, etc). Public Transit could pay for itself if it was run by professionals instead of politicians.
You will get no argument from me about the terrible waste in these usually foolish projects. However, you will never convince me that the cure to wasteful, sinful spending is to give them more money. I don't care what makes the trains run - I want it done at the lowest possible price. The idea as you mentioned, that first they buy the trains, and nobody bothers to factor in the cost of the grade separations (now $500M in Burlingame - for one of them, and just watch that number grow and grow) and the 101 Express lane project which appears to have accomplished nothing but to slow down traffic - oh, and cost the taxpayers a ton of money. I have no use for social engineering via increased taxes. Now, I would go for your proposal is there was a commensurate decrease in the sales tax, now essentially 10%. Good luck with that. Feeding the monster is the exact wrong approach here.
Welcome to the discussion.
Log In
Keep the discussion civilized. Absolutely NO personal attacks or insults directed toward writers, nor others who make comments.
Keep it clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
Don't threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Anyone violating these rules will be issued a warning. After the warning, comment privileges can be revoked.