On the heels of a toll increase that makes travel to San Francisco from the north a little more pricey, an even bigger jump for the Bay Area's state-run bridges is being proposed, taking tolls as much as $3 higher... an increase pushed for by companies like Genentech, Facebook, and Google.

We first heard about this back in December, when the idea was proposed during a Metropolitan Transportation Commission "workshop" at the Hyatt in SF. According to the Chronicle, MTC members have since been in talks at the state Capitol regarding the proposed increase, which "could bring tolls on state-run spans to as much as $9 on the Bay Bridge, which has congestion pricing, and $8 on other bridges."

The additional revenue from the increase — estimated to be as much as $125 million per year — would go to traffic congestion-easing projects like additional BART cars as well as service to San Jose, work to build more high-occupancy vehicle lanes on Bay Area freeways, more ferry systems and express buses, and, the Chron writes, "the growing cost" of SF's new Transbay Transit Center.

It's the congestion management part of this plan that presumably attracted its high-profile supporters, many of which sport a workforce that commutes — per the Chron, "Two of the biggest players pushing for the toll increase are the Silicon Valley Leadership Group — whose members include such tech titans as Genentech, Facebook and Google —and the Bay Area Council, which represents some of the region’s biggest employers, including Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and UCSF."

“When you consider the huge amount of time that commuters waste in traffic every day," Bay Area Council spokesperson Jim Wunderman said in a statement supporting the possible increase, "adding a couple extra dollars to bridge tolls will help cut congestion and expand critical regional mass transit that benefits the entire Bay Area."

Ultimately, however, it's not up to lawmakers or these big companies, it's up to you: toll increases on state-run bridges (that's all of the bridges in the Bay Area sans the Golden Gate, tolls on which increased to as much as $7.75 today) must be agreed to by voters. And so far, voter support is looking good, as a recent poll performed by those high-powered corporate supporters say that "59 percent of those surveyed would support a $2 toll increase that paid for transit improvements, and 56 percent would back a $3 increase."

But we all know how reliable polls are these days, right? According to the Chron, supporters hope to get the increase vote on June primary election ballot. Failing that, expect to see it in November, at the general election.

Previously: Cash-Seeking Transit Officials Mull Proposal To Up Bay Area Bridge Tolls By $3

Those annoyed by a recent proposal to charge sightseers to travel down the crooked part of Lombard Street have still another reason to be ticked today, as a new report reveals a remarkable amount of money and manpower spent to get to the toll road suggestion.

As previously reported, Supervisor Mark Farrell has since 2014 been trying to find a way to quell Lombard Street's popularity, as "the quality of life for residents, not only on the crooked street itself but the vast surrounding neighborhoods, has deteriorated to the point where the city has to step in and make a difference."

It was a report released by the San Francisco County Transportation Authority this month that sent Farrell over the edge, backing the report's suggestion that the city "use an electronic system to manage reservations for and price access to the Crooked Street."

One might wonder how much work it took to get to what's, with all due respect, kind of an obvious way to reduce the use of the street. And now we know, thanks to the Chron's Matier and Ross, who report this study cost $110,000 "and kept nine city staffers and two outside consulting firms busy for more than a year."

If you haven't already read the full report that proposed the toll model, get ready for the biggest bummer of all: Nowhere in its 76 pages does it explain exactly how a toll system might actually work. You know what that means? We need another study to figure that out! I am serious! M&R quote Farrell as saying "I’ve asked for another study to look into" how tolls on Lombard might work.

Plus there are those pesky pedestrians! According to the Chron, "in addition to a study on tolls, Farrell wants the Transportation Authority to suggest ways to handle walkers" as "residents were just as upset about the hordes of pedestrians who make noise, stomp on people’s flowers, drop food wrappers and other litter, and stand in the street."

"A lot of the problem could be eliminated if we just enforced the traffic laws,” Farrell told the Chron, and it seems like enforcing litter laws might help with some of the pedestrian issues, too. But why do that when you can just spend more on studies?

Previously: Supervisor Farrell Proposes FasTrak System, Reservations For Famous Lombard Street Block
Officials Consider Requiring Purchased Tickets To Drive Crooked Part Of Lombard Street

At a workshop meeting Wednesday, Bay Area transit officials floated an idea sure to invoke the ire of some local commuters: A possible toll increase of as much as $3 on the area's seven state-operated bridges.

The Chron reports that the notion was raised at a meeting yesterday of the Bay Area's Metropolitan Transportation Commission at San Francisco's Hyatt Regency. According to the Marin Independent Journal, the assembled commissioners "began discussing plans to seek state legislation to allow it to ask voters for a toll increase in 2018."

According to the MTC, a a $1 toll increase is estimated to raise about $127 million annually. A $2 increase gets you $254 million a year, and a $3 increase would generate $381 million every year.

The funds, the IJ reports, would go to "transportation projects in Marin, Alameda, Contra Costa, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Sonoma, Solano and San Francisco counties," which, if that sounds vague, you're right! A "spending plan still needs to be developed," the MTC admits, with Marin officials saying they hope the cash could go to projects like widening the Novato Narrows and building a connector from the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge to Highway 101.

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf says that the money could instead go to affordable housing, the Chron reports, and "bicycling advocates argued that it should pay for construction of a bike path on the west span of the Bay Bridge between Yerba Buena Island and San Francisco."

Unlike tax or bond propositions, toll increases can't be placed on the ballot by the county or counties it would benefit. The measure (currently referred to as "Regional Measure 3") would have to be proposed by the state legislature in time for the 2018 election. Legislators and voters have a track record of being friendly to these types of measures, with voters passing Regional Measure 1 in 1988, which raised $2 billion for transportation projects. Regional Measure 2, passed in 2004, raised $1.5 billion for projects and an annual $41 million that goes to transit operating costs.

Will the third regional measure be as lucky? We'll soon have an inkling, with MTC officials saying that talks with legislators could begin as soon as next month. Should the Legislature agree, all nine Bay Area counties will see the proposal on the 2018 ballot. And should it garner a simple majority of votes, it will pass — and up will go tolls on area bridges including the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge and the Bay Bridge (the Golden Gate isn't state run and wouldn't have a dog in this ballot fight).

But though increases like $3 are being discussed, even that is still unclear. According to MTC director of legislation and public affairs Randy Rentschler, “The collective thought was to do something big enough to make a difference." But how big we're talking and what the "difference" will be has yet to be decided.

Related: Ongoing Bay Bridge Problems Drain Rainy Day Fund So Officials Look To Tolls

“The number of people on the move between 4 and 5 o’clock is up, and up strongly,” Metropolitan Transit Commission spokesman John Goodwin told KRON 4 last month. Echoing that statement — traffic across toll bridges is getting worse, even at earlier, typically non-rush hours like 5 a.m. — the Chronicle ran some numbers.

The Bay Area Toll Authority reports that across the Bay Bridge, travel between 5 and 10 a.m. is up by 11 percent over 2010. Meanwhile the San Mateo Bridge has seen a 29 percent increase in morning commuters over the same period, the Dumbarton Bridge is up by 27 percent, with the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge up 21 percent.

KTVU’s traffic reporter Sal Castaneda notes that metering lights on the Bay Bridge are, these mornings, flickering on 15 minutes earlier than was once typical, at around 5:30 a.m. compared to 5:45 a.m. Since that same 2010 benchmark, on the Bay Bridge there's been a 75 percent increase in cars between 5 and 6 a.m., an 81 percent increase on the San Mateo Bridge, a 61 percent spike on the Dumbarton Bridge, and a 43 percent increase on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.

“The 5 o’clock hour is like the 6 o’clock hour used to be," Castanada said. "A broken-down car at 5:30 can affect traffic until 10 a.m.”

As senior vice president for public policy at the business group the Bay Area Council, Michael Cunningham adds his perspective on job growth to the conversation surrounding commute woes. “As jobs have been getting added in San Francisco or on the Peninsula,” he said, “the choice has been either to go in early while there still is some capacity on the bridge — and that time keeps getting pushed earlier and earlier — or go in later, or go in during peak and just wait in line.”

As far as traffic within the City of San Francisco proper, the Chronicle wrote this spring that the numbers don't tell the whole sad story. Still, one somewhat speculative figure they do point to is the perhaps 15,000 Uber and Lyft cars on our streets. While those fleets may speed some up, they slow others down.

Related: Ten Years Of Bay Area Traffic Fatalities Mapped

Folks crossing the Golden Gate Bridge will be paying a little more to get into San Francisco starting Wednesday. That's the day the GGB's toll will rise by 25 cents, all part of the plan to get tolls to as high as $8 by 2018.

The GGB last raised tolls in April 2014, upping fees for FasTrak users to $6 and drivers without transponders to $7.

Since the bridge doesn't take any cash tolls — drivers must either use FasTrak or pay-by-plate (in which your license plate is photographed and you're billed) — there's no fear of lines while drivers fumble for change, making an incremental increase like this one possible. We'll see another quarter increase in July 2016, 2017 and 2018, which is when we'll hit the $7 FasTrak/$8 pay-by-plate goal.

These five years of increases is expected to raise $138 million, which officials hope will make a dent in the bridge's projected five-year, $33 million deficit.

“Our capital needs for our aging buses, ferries, facilities and the bridge itself necessitated we set aside more money for those improvements, along with the movable median barrier,” Denis Mulligan, bridge general manager, told the Marin Independent Journal.

But Susan Deluxe, described by the IJ as "a longtime critic of the bridge district," takes the bridge's Board to task for the uptick.

“A quarter toll increase here, a quarter increase there and there is no accountability," she says.

“This is an easy way to slip a new toll under the radar...It’s a small amount and doesn’t raise the hackles of the public. But it adds up, of course.”

It's been nearly 44 years since pedestrians were charged a toll to cross the Golden Gate Bridge. But if one point in a Golden Gate Bridge fundraising plan gets approved, that toll would be back on again, as well as one for cyclists.

According to the Marin Independent Journal, the Golden Gate Bridge district is looking at a five-year, $33 million deficit, the result of "personnel costs, the seismic retrofit of the span, a $75 million bill to help pay for the ongoing Doyle Drive upgrade, south tower painting and the partial loss of revenue from a downsized local bus contract with Marin County."

Apparently, the $19 million in salary savings that dumping human toll booth workers was supposed to accomplish wasn't enough for the District, which Monday released a 45-point plan to keep the agency above the choppy waters of debt.

One of the points is "Evaluate sidewalk access fees" for bikes and pedestrians, with a possible implementation date of some time in 2017. This isn't the first time fees for these folks have been considered: back in 2009, the GGB put a charge for pedestrians and cyclists on their financial plan, but dumped it due to "ongoing maintenance on the sidewalks," the I-J reports.

A similar toll was also proposed ia decade ago, but was quashed after vigorous protest from bike groups.

Bridge spokesperson Priya Clemens says that "This is something the board's financial advisory committee would like the full board to consider, but it is by no means set in stone. It's just a concept right now."

Perhaps its conceptual nature is why the District doesn't seem to have a solid idea of how much a toll like this would generate. Our best guess is from the numbers bandied about during that decade-ago conversation, when revenues of $500,000 to $1.5 million a year were estimated.

The imperfect system of photographing license plates and billing people apparently wrongly bills about 33 people per day, or one tenth of one percent of its billings. CBS is on the case, and they interview one irate woman who claims to have been screwed twice by the Fastrak system — though her story sounds a little off, to be honest, claiming she was wrongly billed twice, but one of those times she paid in cash and we only have her word on that.

Anyway, her case leads CBS's Consumerwatch to get the MTC's John Goodwin on the record admitting that there are errors.

Goodwin says the majority of toll evasion mistakes are due to license plate frames, that obscure the bottom of the characters on the license plate, making it appear that the tag is from a different vehicle. For example, Goodwin says an E will sometimes appear to be an F, or a Z will be read as a 7.

So, he suggests, if you receive a bill that you think is in error, you should try escalating any phone call you make to a supervisor at Fastrak.

But the case of the lady who's just claiming she definitely paid cash to a toll-taker and then received a bill is an argument for getting rid of all toll takers like they did on the Golden Gate — then the only complaints can be about blurry license plate images.

Also, lady, get a damn transponder. It makes things go faster for all of us.

[CBS 5]

Poised to become the first bridge in the U.S. to axe all toll workers, the Golden Gate Bridge revealed plans on its upcoming all-electric toll taking. The electronic system will begin in December with a human available to take your $6 payment. However, come February, according to the Chronicle, "the only options for drivers will be signing up for FasTrak, opening a pay-as-you-go license plate account, or making a one-time payment before the transit district mails a bill."

Does this mean the toll taker will come to an end? Probably.

"We'll be looking with very keen interest at how this goes when implemented on the Golden Gate Bridge," Metropolitan Transportation Commission John Goodwin explained to the Chronicle, adding, "It's real clear that this is the direction the industry is moving in, so we want to see the real-world results."

Expect widespread confusion and hysteria when the all-electric toll-taking system goes into effect.

While tolls for folks coming into the city makes perfect sense, paying to leave San Francisco sounds bizarre, right? After all, San Francisco is so special that one should be rewarded for taking the time and effort to exit its gilded borders, yes?. (Our friends who live in the other bays must promise us a treasure chest of booze, entertainment, sparkling conversation, quality TV programming and/or films, and pick-ups to and from BART stations to tempt us to leave S.F.)

Which is why we were a bit shocked to see the San Francisco Transportation Authority new toll plan. According to the Mercury News, "[t]he agency is considering a proposal to turn the line with San Mateo County into a virtual toll plaza, charging rush-hour commuters up to $6 each weekday to cross into -- and out of -- the city by the bay."

Details:

In addition to raising the car toll another $1 come 2013, the board of directors of the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District is considering charging bicyclists and pedestrians to cross the bridge following the completion of seismic upgrades to the pedestrian walkways. The board meets today to review these proposals, which are meant to close a projected $132 million deficit over the next five years.

While this proposal seems kind of crazy to us given the oddity of paying to walk across something, we suppose it's just another way to bilk the tourists -- and it sure isn't as batshit insane as this proposal by the Committee for Pedestrian Tolls in New York City, which suggests installing toll booths on sidewalks to enter the area between 14th and 59th Streets because, and we quote, pedestrians "cause every bit as much damage to our infrastructure as drivers." Ha!

State-owned bridges like the Bay and San Mateo Bridges may face a toll hike of a dollar (from $4 to $5) in the next year in order to cover costs for retrofitting bridges like the Antioch and Dumbarton bridges, which are apparently also due for collapse in the next big earthquake (along with the Bay Bridge's current eastern span). Why bridges built in the 70s and 80s would need retrofitting is beyond us, but obviously a testament to the fact that government has always cut corners wherever possible. The Golden Gate Bridge, which is privately owned, has had a $5 toll for several years now.

Given all the arguments about street closures and vehicular traffic, we'd say go for an even $10, but then we don't drive across the bridge very often or require deliveries from the East, so that would be selfish of us.

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."