Editorial

Raise all the Damned Bridge Tolls to $5

Three cheers! The Golden Gate Bridge toll has been raised to $5! But more needs to be done.

SUV fetishists were appalled that the Golden Gate Bridge District would suggest they pay their fair share. When the usual attempts to bully and shout down toll increase proponents failed to work, outrage by the car fanatics turned to worry: might California’s long love affair with the car be on the rocks?

Well, the Beach Boys sure aren’t recording paeans to gridlock. For average folks, the convenience, even the usefulness, of car driving is fading fast. Only the wealthy can afford rolling living rooms, outsized SUV’s big enough to make being stuck in traffic palatable. The average schmo gets stuck paying the taxes to pay for a vast publicly-funded road infrastructure and an Army to boot to keep the oil coming.

California’s carefree romp with the automobile has soured into a S&M dirge, with the oil and auto industries wielding the whip. Californians are fed up and they’re not going to take it anymore.

The passing of California’s car culture has been prematurely predicted before, but consider that at the same time that the Golden Gate Bridge toll was being increased, to the consternation of the Bush administration a bill moved through the California legislature limiting greenhouse gases,. This legislation is a knife in the heart to the auto and oil industry.

The person responsible for this landmark bill, arguably the most important environmental accomplishment in a generation, is none other than Bay Area clean-ferry advocate Russell Long. Dr. Long’s heroic achievement requiring cars to clean up their act is closely related to his call for an environmentally responsible comprehensive regional ferry service. How so? Public transit, including ferry service, must be dramatically improved. The average Californian, so often overlooked in this era of wealthy special interests, needs a viable alternative to the single-occupant car.

And the only way to pay for it is by increasing bridge tolls and, better still, gasoline taxes. So the question is, why not raise all Bay Area bridge tolls to $5 in accordance with the Golden Gate Bridge?

The money generated would allow work to start now building clean ferries and expanding bus and rail service. And, at $5, Bay Area bridge tolls would still be significantly less than those in the New York metropolitan area where they are commonly $7. So what stands in the way?

Political timidity in the face of mindless anti-tax zealots. Even State Senator Don Perata, who has long taken a courageous public stand in favor of increasing bridge tolls, is willing to go only as far as proposing a $3 toll, and then only for the Bay Bridge, leaving the Dumbarton and San Mateo Bridges at $2. And instead of making the increase legislatively, as would be permitted, Senator Perata wants to put the matter before the public in the form of a regional bond measure.

The political cognoscenti tremble at the thought of raising taxes; such is the reflexive revulsion for taxes of any kind on the part of the voting public. Yet some taxes are both good and popular, such as levies on tobacco and alcohol. Lots of voters smoke and drink, yet accept the need to pay for the cost to society of their doing so. Why not the same with driving?