As the state of New York barrels ahead with congestion pricing to battle climate change and traffic, a similar plan for San Francisco has been shelved, likely to the relief of retailers and small business owners.

In the state of New York. new-ish Governor Kathy Hochul is still going full speed ahead on a controversial plan to charge a congestion pricing fee in parts of Manhattan, a plan which has been in the works for more than three years. It may surprise you to hear that San Francisco has been considering a similar model for roughly the same amount of time — a plan to reduce traffic, battle climate change, and improve public safety by charging somewhere around $6.50 to drive into downtown at certain peak hours.

So as Gov. Hochul suffers the slings and arrows of New York media piling onto the plan, the Chronicle asks a reasonable question. What happened to the SF version of congestion pricing?  

“It’s been paused,” San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) spokesperson Eric Young told the Chronicle. “That’s how we refer to it.”

That makes sense. Downtown was moribund during the pandemic some days with more coyotes than cars. And at the height of the pandemic, such a plan would have only milked essential workers out of more money.

But the congestion pricing idea did bubble up occasionally during COVID-19. SFCTA discussed the idea in a July 2021 meeting, and held public forums on the matter the following month.  

The congestion pricing would only apply two “zones,” one a downtown area, and the other a North Beach-Fisherman’s Wharf zone.

The current scheme for how this would work, per the Chronicle, is “electronically charging drivers entering the zone between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. a toll of $6.50 with a discounted cost of $4.33 for moderate-income people, $2.17 for low-income people and no charge for those with very low incomes.” They add that “Drivers with disabilities would pay $3.25. Drivers for ride-hailing service like Uber and Lyft would pay the full charge for each ride, and would likely pass the fee on to passengers.”

Still, is this a terrible time to consider such a thing, considering that most small businesses are by no means recovered from the pandemic. But this being San Francisco, the plan would reportedly take no fewer than five years before going into effect.

Related: Wiener To Push for Rush-Hour Congestion Pricing In San Francisco [SFist]

Image: Saketh Garuda via Unsplash

Sure, it looks empty above; but wait ‘til the aging bridge decks near the site of the Alemany Farmers Market get their steel and concrete beams replaced next summer.

Not many people go to the Portola neighborhood, but a lot of people go through the Portola neighborhood. The Chronicle estimates that 244,000 cars traverse a stretch of U.S. Route 101 above Portola on a daily basis. The Chronicle also estimates that these drivers will endure a horrible July and possibly also August in the summer of 2020, as a bridge deck repair project with the innocent name 101 Deck Replacement project at Alemany Circle in San Francisco has been given the derisive nickname “Carmageddon”. Caltrans officials predict “the project will cause backups for 6 miles” on a stretch that already does not move particularly smoothly.  

“I would agree with you that whole entire area is completely congested with no work going on,“ Caltrans Bay Area Director Tony Tavares said at a Caltans meeting Tuesday. “It’s going to get even worse during this period of time.”    

As far as Caltrans videos go, the Alemany Deck Replacement Project video above is informative, has some cool historical shots of the 1950s-era deck structure, and also some lovely computer animation to explain how Caltrans plans to bust up 25 spans of steel-reinforced concrete, replace the steel, and put in new concrete.

But if you live anywhere near the Alemany Boulevard exit, seen as little star on the Caltrans map above, you will see 101 highway traffic routed onto your neighborhood streets. Northbound traffic will be forced to exit at Alemany Boulevard and get back on to the 101 a quarter mile ahead. Southbound travelers will be forced to use the new northbound lanes while that span has its work done. Both directions will have their work performed at separate times, and each direction’s repairs are projected to last nine days (ha!).

It’s only 800 feet of deck area being reconstructed, but it will have congestion ripple effects for miles. Motorists are encouraged to consider alternate routes, use public transit, or simply spend their time in bumper-to-bumper traffic contemplating how this is at least better than having concrete chunks fall on your car.

Related: MacArthur Maze Rebuild Portends Massive Traffic Snarl [SFist]

Image: Caltrans YouTube channel

In our latest installment of No, It's Not Just You, we address your conspiracy theory that Lyft and Uber drivers are causing disproportionate problems in bike lanes, transit lanes, and all places that cars exist in SF. We confirm that your theory is totally true, based on the three months of data collected by the San Francisco Police Department. The Examiner reports that Uber and Lyft drivers are responsible for two-thirds of downtown San Francisco's congestion-related traffic violations while the Chronicle's Rachel Swan notes that “these drivers log about 1.4 miles for every mile they drive a passenger.”

The most common violations include obstructing transit or bike lanes, or blocking regular lanes of traffic (by stopping to wait for a passenger, obviously).

The details of the three-month study, conducted with data covering April 1-June 30, 2017, can be seen in the tweet above. (“TNC” refers to “Transportation Network Company” which is how the city classifies Uber and Lyft.) These findings, presented at a Monday meeting of the Board of Supervisors Land Use and Transportation committee hearing, set off a characteristically complainy-pants response from Supervisor Aaron Peskin, which was captured by the Examiner.

“What you’re telling me is [ride-hail] drivers violate the law more flagrantly than non-[ride-hail] drivers,” Peskin demanded of SFPD commander Robert O’Sullivan as he presented the data.

“Yes,” O’Sullivan replied.

“I’m going to talk to City Attorney Herrera about this right now,” Peskin fumed. Herrera is already suing Uber to get driver information from the company, with the ultimate goal of getting the drivers properly accredited with business licenses and better understanding the scope of their impacts on SF's infrastructure.

The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce quickly pushed back on these findings. The chamber’s senior VP Jim Lazarus argued that an uptick in rideshare usage is inevitable with the Bay Area population surge, and people are essentially voting with their wallets (or smartphones, in this case). “The people of San Francisco have told you how they want to get around,” Lazarus said Monday.

These findings will inevitably set off more debate over whether taxi drivers are more dangerous than Lyft and Uber drivers, and the Comments section below is delighted to entertain all of your arguments. But we do now have a definite data point saying that well over half of downtown traffic violations are from Lyft and Uber drivers, and the information comes from the police department — who do not really have a dog in this fight, and are likely a pretty objective source. Sure, Uber and Lyft are used more frequently than ever, so their share of traffic violations is bound to go up. But if these two rideshare companies are responsible for 15-20 percent of Bay Area traffic while causing more than 60 percent of the traffic violations, it may be time to look hard at that out-of-whack ratio and consider whether something baked in the rideshare cake is causing these drivers to drive more dangerously.

Related: Watch Stanley Roberts Shame Double-Parking Uber And Lyft Drivers

The beleaguered residents of Lombard Street's most popular stretch will remain under tourist siege for the near future, it appears, after a proposal to decrease tourist traffic via a toll system was stalled at the study stage.

We've been talking about this for a while now: Residents along SF's iconic twisty street say that tourists are getting too obnoxious to bear, with one 20-year resident saying last fall that he had to chase two visitors with a golf club after they breached his roof.

Since 2014, the city has sought to find a solution to the issue, first by closing the area to cars, which had the unexpected consequence of packing the area with pedestrians. Supervisor Mark Farrell pushed the San Francisco County Transportation Authority to seek a solution, and what they came up with was a possible toll/reservation system...a brilliant, mind-blowing plan that "kept nine city staffers and two outside consulting firms busy for more than a year" and cost $110,000 to conceive.

Apparently, that $110K wasn't enough to figure out how tolls work, as the Ex reports that the CTA was poised Tuesday to spend $250,000 more to study the proposed toll plan.

(Hilariously, that $250K is just "the first portion of the study," the Ex reports, "meant to develop potential ways for the tolling system to operate, and to engineer equipment to make the tolling possible." Another $250,000 in planning funding "was announced Monday as part of Mayor Ed Lee’s proposed capital budget.")

At Tuesday's CTA Board meeting, however, Board of Supervisors president London Breed stalled the funding vote. Breed, who'd previously supported Farrell's toll plan, complained Tuesday that decision makers hadn't been presented with enough options to solve Lombard's congestion crisis. “I’m sure there are better options" than the toll plan, she said.

Firing back at Breed, Farrell told the Ex that "the neighbors are rightfully demanding action from City Hall, and not excuses...After multiple years of study from city agencies, the surrounding neighborhoods are in agreement with city staff to explore a pricing reservation management system.”

The CTA Board is made up of SF's 11 supervisors, with Aaron Peskin as Chair and Katy Tang as Vice Chair. So now, the question is who from the Board will side with Breed, and who with Farrell. If enough other members of the board share Breed's misgivings, it's back to the drawing board for the CTA...and back to the golf bag, it appears, for some Lombard Street residents.

Previously: It Took Nine People And $110K To Come Up With Toll Idea For Lombard Street

Is the Bay Area congested, racist, incestuous, and overpriced? That's what one of Google's current developer advocates believes, which is why he is leaving the company.

Well-known coder, entrepreneur, and all around tech brainiac Tim Bray made this announcement on his blog Thursday, saying that he'd be leaving Google as of March 17.

"It’s an amicable separation in the face of irreconcilable differences," Bray wrote. "I wouldn’t move to California and Google wouldn’t open a Vancouver office."

Bray said that even after four years of generously paid, "super-interesting" work, he "was never really tempted" to move here from his current home in Canada, due to the Bay Area's congestion, racism, sibling-fucking, and priciness.

Re/code's Nellie Bowles took this to mean that "even developers are getting fed up with the number of developers in San Francisco," implying that, perhaps, the expensive bigots crowding up the place (and french kissing their brothers, or whatever) Bray's referring to are his "other tech workers." This is an intriguing take! Well played, Bowles.

One could, perhaps, try to convince Bray that his assessment of the Bay Area is inaccurate, as many of the commenters on his post did. However, if Bray did then decide to move to the Bay Area, that actually would make it a bit more congested, no? Maybe it's best to just leave him be.

[re/code]
[Tim Bray]

Bay Area commuters have been banging their heads against the wheel for years, if not decades. But according to an annual study by researchers at Texas A&M University, this year marks a congestion landmark: we've got it just as bad as Los Angeles.

The university's Transportation Institute is out with the latest edition of its Urban Mobility Report, which quantifies commute times, wasted hours, fuel expenditure and other effects of gridlock patterns. The report ranks DC's traffic as traffic congestion's biggest loser, with the Los Angeles and San Francisco metro areas tied for second place. And you know how much we hate sharing anything with LA.

The researchers concluded that over 2011, the year from which Texas A&M collected the data, the average driver in the Bay Area loses 61 hours to gridlocked roads and 25 gallons of gasoline. To put that in the context of your wallet, SF's bad traffic cost the average driver an extra $1,266 in 2011 (not to mention the emotional tolls and additional cost of blood pressure medication).

So what are we going to do about it? Telecommuting and high unemployment rates have helped level off traffic problems that could be even worse, but they're hardly long-term solutions to the problem. Better public transportation, carpooling, flexible working hours, and more intelligent construction planning are all factors. "There are solutions that work," the study reads. "Getting more productivity out of the existing road and public transportation systems is vital to reducing congestion and improving travel time reliability."

If nothing else, it may be time to put out put our "BEAT LA" chant to good use.

Drivers without FasTrak, be sure to get one within the next year to avoid further cash bridge toll headaches. In an effort to decrease toll-collection costs, ease congestion, and encourage more drivers to pay tolls electronically, the Bay Area Toll Authority will likely be eliminating at least one cash lane on seven Bay Area bridges and adding an additional FasTrak-only lane on the Bay Bridge, the San Mateo Bridge, and the Carquinez Bridge, which would be open during commute hours. The new FasTrak-only lane on the Bay Bridge would be ready by next summer. The changes would cut the number of toll collectors by about 10 percent, and savings are calculated to amount to "several million dollars."

Oh, sure, you've seen all the coverage of Jan Gehl's plan to turn Fisherman's Wharf into something tolerable. But wouldn't you like to know more? The excellent SPUR is holding a forum TODAY about the city's plan to alleviate pedestrian-congestion by updating the neighborhood's 1950s-style freeway-inspired urban design: widening sidewalks, installing benches, and adding bike lanes, injunction be damned. After all, be honest: when's the last time you went to Fisherman's Wharf? Probably when you had out-of-town guests.

SPUR's guest will be urban designer Neil Hrushowy, explaining the plan and answering questions. It's at SPUR's office at 312 Sutter St. (at Grant), Fifth Floor, from 12:30 to 1:30 pm. "Feel free to bring a lunch," says SPUR, which is a nice way of saying, "no we're not feeding you; what do we look like, a Waffle House?" It's free for SPUR members and $5 for everyone else.

And!

Don't miss their Thursday forum on high-speed rail! Rail expert Rod Diridon, Sr. is visiting. Says SPUR, "Let him lead you on a world tour of high-speed rail systems and then enjoy a spirited and informed discussion of the practicalities and politics of California's proposed high speed rail." Same time, place, and catering arrangements as before.

-- San Mateo Bridge shuts down, then opens. Ta-da. [Examiner]

-- Dan Noyes on Jerry Lucas, the sanity-estranged man who followed a then-pregnant Jill Rabinowitz into her garage, severely beating her with a can of paint. He might soon get sprung from the funny farm. [ABC7]

-- Streets such as "Van Ness Avenue, Broadway...Harrison Street" and more could turn into toll roads under a proposed city plan to ease traffic congestion. [Chron]

-- Viggo Mortensen shows off his penis during a nude fight scene (albeit a tasteful one, of course) in David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises. [SJ Merc]

-- Newsom and cults. (Of love, that is. No, not really. Something about a questionable yoga and holistic health sect called Dahn.) [The Snitch]

-- Damien Hirst's "For the Love of God": a pretty, pretty diamond-studded skull! [SFBG]

-- Save-the-date info on another Transbay Terminal meeting at City Hall. Eee! [Curbed SF]

-- TWoP underwent a most radical transformation, visually. [TWoP]


Image: Metropolitan Transportation Commission

The city's been trying to get the money to fix the road for ages, and have finally gotten the feds to agree -- but the feds will only kick in money if we agree to charge a toll to use the road. And the toll would be the $5 toll to actually cross the Golden Gate Bridge itself. The grant requires that the toll use a congestion-pricing model, so the amount would fluctuate based on traffic patterns, with a max probably of $2. We also can't tell if that would be $2 for a round-trip or if you'd have to pay the toll going both ways.

All the money from the toll would go towards fixing the road, which seemed to leaven the news with some of the drivers interviewed by the Chron, but still -- $7 (or $9, if you have to pay both ways) just to get to Marin? Yikes. (Also, in a side note, we didn't really understand the objection one guy had, which was that he thought the city should pay for the repairs and not the taxpayers. Isn't the city's money from taxpayers too?)

This week ended with the launch of the seventh and final Harry Potter installation. But while the world was consumed with Pottermania, it's important to remember that there were more serious things going on in the world, too - two of them in -Ist cities.

Sampaist was shocked when a passenger jet crashed into the center of Sao Paulo, killing at least 200 people. The airplane, an Airbus A320, skidded off the runway at the city's Congonhas airport in wet weather, then raced over a very heavily-trafficked avenue during rush hour, before crashing into a gas station.

For Gothamist, New York City's aging infrastructure caused a huge steam pipe explosion in Midtown Manhattan that killed one, left two seriously injured and injured at least forty others. But in lighter news, Whole Foods' release of the "I'm Not a Plastic Bag" caused fights amongst eco-trend-seekers. Speaking of eco-trends, congestion pricing was kind of approved to move forward in the Big Apple. NY State finally sued Exxon-Mobil for the mid-century Brooklyn oil spill that was about twice the size of the Exxon Valdez spill. And Gothamist has videos of their conversations with the manager and residents of the famous Hotel Chelsea.

SFist woke up to a minor jolt Friday morning, care of a 4.2 earthquake along the nervously-monitored Hayward fault, but what's really shaking the city is theorange-laced anticipation of Barry Bonds inching closer to more record-breaking behavior. Other behavior includes VVM publication SF Weekly's dismissal of their web editor, Matt Stroud - SFist has the post that booted him out of said position. And speaking of controversial posts, the Propaganda III art exhibit had many arguing about freedom of speech, racism, anti-Semitism, and other precious topics of debate. Also, local SF Supes Chris Daly and Bevan Dufty almost throw down, one automobile owner's desperate plea for a crime-free life, and SFist alum Derrick ("Obsession With Food" scribe) moves on to glory via his cover story in the Chronicle's wine section. SFist couldn't be more proud. Sob.

Londonist celebrated their Britishness this week. Their inner toffs were liberated at the Chap Olympiad, at which the upper classes compete for "golden bowler hats" in events such as umbrella hockey and "slap the bounder." What-ho. They also attended a discussion evening in a ladies restroom - or "toilet," to use the local lingo. Meanwhile, with the Transformers movie on the way to the UK, London's cab drivers have been converting their motors into giant pink rabbits. And a new graffiti artist was in town, decorating London's walls with 22 stencils of Lennon, Jagger and other musical icons. Londonist has got it all mapped.