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Re: Toll hike vote indicates Bay Area struggles ahead

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It passed because there are far more people who doesn't commute by driving 
on the bridges.  $3 a day times 250 days a year is $750, which most workers 
cannot afford.

Eventually they will charge tolls going both way instead of just one 
direction.

"David Fritz"  wrote in message news:XnsA8F9885E9C61FE9A@0.0.0.1...

The margin of victory for a $3 bridge toll hike on Tuesday’s ballot shows
just how hard it will be for Bay Area leaders to solve the region’s
transportation and housing crisis.

Win or lose, backers of Regional Measure 3 were clear from the onset: This
was just a small down payment on the Bay Area’s traffic woes. There’s much
more work to do and money to raise.

A toll hike was supposed to be an easy electoral lift. It required just a
simple majority approval from the voters in the nine Bay Area counties – a
huge political advantage over other taxing options that would have needed
two-thirds voter approval.

Moreover, most voters wouldn’t have to pay except for, perhaps, the
occasional recreational trip on the weekend. It was mostly a
disproportionate tax of daily bridge commuters for the benefit of the
whole region.

Even still, the toll hike measure garnered only 54 percent support. Contra
Costa and Solano, two counties with more bridge commuters, solidly
rejected the measure, but they were outweighed by voters from larger
counties like Santa Clara, with its minimal number who depend on the spans
to get to work.

More importantly for the future, none of the nine counties provided two-
thirds support to the measure, indicating that other types of regional
transportation taxes will probably struggle at the polls.

That means a solution won’t happen unless leaders of businesses that are
driving the region’s unprecedented economic boom – and, in turn, its
traffic and housing woes – step up financially.

Any solution will also require regional transportation officials, who are
struggling to keep up with the Bay Area’s rapid growth, provide a
desperately needed overarching plan.

If they fail, the inadequacy of the current piecemeal planning will
literally chase off the workers needed to sustain the region’s surging
economy.

The extent of the rapidly rising concern about housing, traffic and
homelessness was made clear this week when the Bay Area Council released a
poll of the region’s registered voters.

Only 25 percent think we’re headed in the right direction, while 55
percent say we’re on the wrong track. That’s almost an exact reversal of
the numbers from four years ago, when the numbers were 57 percent and 27
percent, respectively.

So, what’s next?

Except for the bridge toll, the revenue-raising options are generally
sales taxes, which disproportionately affect lower-income households, and
property taxes, which only serve to exacerbate the housing affordability
crisis.

Little wonder that 46 percent of the people surveyed in the Bay Area
Council poll said they are likely to move out of the nine-county region in
the next few years. We don’t know whether they will actually make good on
the threat, but the frustration is unmistakable.

It helps explain why cities like Cupertino (home of Apple), and Mountain
View (think Google), are considering taxing large companies by the number
of their employees to help offset their cumulative impact on traffic
congestion and housing shortage.

These city-by-city piecemeal solutions will probably do little to address
the bigger regional problem. But it’s hard to blame local officials when
regional transportation and planning leaders offer only incremental, stop-
gap measures of their own, like the toll-hike measure.

The lack of a cohesive transportation plan was the complaint of key
opponents to the toll hike like David Schonbrunn, president of TRANSDEF, a
nonprofit transit group, and Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord.

The reality is that we can’t tax our way out of this mess. Most people
simply can’t afford it. Transportation leaders must start thinking more
creatively about, for example, how they can provide more public
transportation at a cheaper cost.

And the size of the problem is so big that no meaningful solution is
possible without those business leaders taking a bigger financial role in
solving the congestion and housing crisis they’re creating.

They can’t just hide behind those Google buses and claim they’ve done
their part. It will take a lot more.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/06/05/borenstein-toll-hike-vote-
indicates-bay-area-struggles-ahead/ 

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Toll hike vote indicates Bay Area struggles ahead David Fritz <david.fritz@vzw.com> - 2018-06-06 20:24 +0000
  Re: Toll hike vote indicates Bay Area struggles ahead "Kenneth M. Lin" <kenmlin@aol.com> - 2018-06-12 18:33 -0700
  Re: Toll hike vote indicates Bay Area struggles ahead "Kenneth M. Lin" <kenmlin@aol.com> - 2018-07-22 10:11 -0700

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