Adolfo Cabral lived and worked much of his life in San Francisco until housing prices forced him a decade ago to move across the Bay to western Berkeley. He's not happy San Francisco is considering a plan to charge him — and thousands of other commuters — a fee to drive into the city's most congested downtown areas during rush hours.
"San Francisco's housing prices chased me out of town," said Cabral, who drives in a car pool to a job in the financial district. "Now, they want to tax me for driving back in. I don't like the idea of government sticking their hands in our pockets every time they need a solution to a problem caused by poor planning."
To fight gridlock, smog and global-warming gases, San Francisco is considering becoming the first city in the nation to impose congestion-management fees during rush hour to drive into and possibly out of the busiest downtown areas.
Fees from $1 to $4 are being examined in an 18-month study of congestion pricing by the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, an agency governed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. The money would be invested in public transit and other congestion-reducing measures.
"We're trying to manage a scarce resource, our roads," said Tilly Chang, the transportation authority's deputy director for planning. "There are power and gas rates that also put a premium price on use during peak demand. Why not roads, too?"
Congestion fees for
drivers have reduced rush-hour traffic in London; Rome; Stockholm, Sweden; and Singapore by 20 percent to 30 percent, according to an authority report.
The authority held four public meetings on the plan in the past 10 days in San Francisco, Oakland and San Rafael. Initial recommendations are due in the fall, with a decision expected next year by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
Under one option, the city would hire FasTrak to electronically collect fees in a four-square-mile area with the Financial District, Civic Center and South of Market neighborhood. Those without FasTrak would be identified by a license plate photograph and billed.
Under another option, fees would be collected from drivers entering the city during rush hour. The fees would be in addition to bridge tolls.
Planners have yet to pin down details of the plan, including whether the fees would be collected for driving into and out of pay zones in both morning and afternoon rush hours. Also to be determined is whether car pooling vehicles, motorcycles or low-income drivers would be exempt.
Chang said authority managers believe people living within fee zones should get some exemption, but not a free ride.
The millions of dollars in annual money from the fees could be spent to expanded public transit and possibly make it easier to walk and ride a bicycle.
The notion of paying to add parking spaces at filled BART lots at suburban stations is also "on the table for discussion," Chang said.
Skeptics of the plan question if it is fair, workable and effective.
Some question if it's right to charge fees on a public road.
"(A road) was supposedly for the benefit of all," George Coleman of Danville wrote in an e-mail. He suggests the fee proposal amounts to selling off a public resource without a public vote.
In a workshop on the plan last week in Oakland, Ipeleng Kgositsile of Oakland said she is concerned the fee could put a burden on low-income residents.
Transit officials say they are considering a discount for low-income people, who account for about 5 percent of the trips in and out of downtown during rush hour.
Mark McComb, a Piedmont accountant who commutes by motorcycle into downtown, said it would be unfair if any congestion fees did not exempt motorcycles.
"They should be encouraging people to use motorcycles to reduce congestion and pollution," McComb said.
Transportation Authority officials said San Francisco's downtown has some of the worst traffic in the Bay Area with traffic limping along at 10 mph or less on many streets.
More than half the trips in and out of downtown are in private motor vehicles, transit planners said.
Some San Francisco business leaders worry that the congestion fees will hurt local business, discouraging people from traveling into San Francisco.
"We feel drawing an arbitrary line around part of the San Francisco to charge a fee doesn't make sense," said Jim Lazarus, a vice president of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.
If fees are to be charged, it makes more sense to charge congestion fees on major bridges rather than single out one part of one city, he said.
State Assemblyman Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, said he's convinced that congestion pricing is eventually going to catch on in major cities.
"It's more of a question of when, not if it will happen," said DeSaulnier, chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee. "Having said that, I think it's too early to do it in San Francisco."
Reach Denis Cuff at 925-943-8267 or dcuff@bayareanewsgroup.com.
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